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CORNELL
UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY
FROM
3 1924 102 331_J66
Cornell University
Library
The original of this book is in
the Cornell University Library.
There are no known copyright restrictions in
the United States on the use of the text.
http://archive.org/details/cu31924102331166
Old Concord
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4,^ vy ; - w^-v,
At Meriam's Corner
Old Concord
By
Allen French
With Drawings by
Lester G. Hornby
n on -refer ?
SWVAP-CI3S
Boston
Little, Brown, and Company
Re.
■&E.
Copyright, igij,
By Little, Brown, and Company.
All rights reserved
Published, October, 1915
NOtfoOOtl J3TC8S
Set up and electrotyped by J. S. Cushing Co., Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
Printed by
Louis £. Crosscuf, Boston, U. S. A.
.1.1 i!'iiii):i ^Vr-
Y.flMlUU *-V« v
Preface
THIS book, while primarily designed to present
the points of chief interest in the historical and
literary associations of Old Concord, may also be
depended upon for its accuracy. Its historical mat-
ter I have drawn from the Concord histories of
Lemuel Shattuck (1835) and Charles H. Walcott
(1884), from the Concord Social Circle Memoirs,
from the writings of Grindall Reynolds, and from
the publications of the Concord Antiquarian Soci-
ety, chiefly those by the late George Tolman. For
facts concerning Concord's literary notables I have
drawn principally upon their own writings. The
[vii]
Preface
book also contains material from Concord tradition
and family knowledge, not to be found in print.
For help in verifying my statements, and for supply-
ing me with much matter previously unknown to me,
I am much indebted to my neighbors Dr. Edward
Waldo Emerson, Judge Prescott Keyes, and Mr.
Adams Tolman. I am also greatly obliged for the
courteous help of the librarians of the Concord Free
Public Library, and I desire to express my thanks for
permission to quote directly from the publications
of the Concord Social Circle, Houghton Mifflin
Company, and Charles Scribner's Sons.
ALLEN FRENCH.
Concord, Massachusetts.
June, 1915.
[ viii ]
Contents
Chapter
Page
Preface ...•••
vii
I. Retrospective ....
I
II. Military Affairs
• 35
III. Chiefly Literary
• 77
IV. The Burying Grounds
• 157
Envoi
• 177
Index
. 181
[ix]
Illustrations
The Three Arch Stone Bridge Half-title
At Meriam's Corner Frontispiece
Page
The Old Mill Building, on the Milldam . . . . vii
Ephraim W. Bull's "Grapevine Cottage." Home of the
Concord Grape . . . - . . . . . ix
The little Shops of the Milldam from the Square . . xi
The Antiquarian Society's House ..... i
The Unitarian Church ....... 7
The Old Tree at the Town Hall 17
The Old Colonial Inn. Deacon White's Corner . . 23
Across the Meadows . . . . . . 35
The Wright Tavern 47
The Old Elisha Jones House. The House with the Bullet
Hole 57
The Monument of 1836, and across the Bridge the "Min-
ute Man" 69
[xi]
Illustrations
R.
Graves of British Soldiers
The Emerson House
The Old Chapter House of the D. A
The Thoreau-Alcott House
The Old Manse
The Hemlocks ....
In Emerson's Study
The Alcott "Cottage" (i 840-1 842) on Main Street
Orchard House, Home of the Alcotts
Hawthorne's "Wayside" .
Academy Lane ....
Thoreau's Cairn at Walden
The Sanborn House from the River
In the Old Hill Burying-ground
Hawthorne's Grave in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery
The Ridge in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery
The Old North Bridge . . ...
Page
75
77
81
87
95
103
109
"5
125
133
141
147
153
157
167
173
177
[xii]
Old Concord
Retrospective
THE best point from which to begin to see Old
Concord is from the narrow northern end of
the Square which lies at the center of the town.
Here, from the sidewalk in front of the rambling
buildings of the Colonial Inn, one sees stretching
away an oblong grass plot of scarcely more than
half an acre, with a granite obelisk in its middle.
Beyond the oblong, across a strip of roadway, is a
grassy oval, from which rises a flagstaff. These
open spaces constitute the Square at Concord,
Massachusetts, still a center of town life, but more
than that, a goal of pilgrimage from everywhere.
Here New England farmers and housewives come
to attend lectures or town-meeting or church, and
to carry on many of the public functions of their
lives. But here also come Southerner and West-
erner; here come even Englishman and German,
Japanese and Hindu, to worship for a day at shrines
not yet forgotten.
A road runs round the Square, and at its farther
[3]
Old Concord
— the southern — end, its two parts converge into
a broad street which seems to narrow as it bends
to the left and disappears on its way to Lexington.
Its two conspicuous buildings are at its right : first
a low, red, hip-roofed structure, the ancient Wright
Tavern, where Pitcairn stirred his brandy ; then,
rising above it, the white Unitarian church, around
whose site cluster many memories. As the eye
travels from these to the opposite side of the street,
and so back along the left of the Square, one sees
first a dwelling, then a little burying-ground that
climbs a hill, the Catholic church, the opening of
Bedford Street, the big red-and-brown Town Hall,
and the square, buff Court-house. Or looking from
the church and tavern along the right side of the
Square, one sees first the beginning of the Milldam
(Concord's short business street, closely lined with
stores), then the neatly planted open space of the
Middlesex Grounds, then the priest's residence, the
Catholic parish house, the brick Masonic Lodge,
and the new Christian Science church.
Across the Milldam and around the Square move
quiet trade, pleasant social life, the town's simple
business ; and except in winter there ebbs and
flows here the tide of tourists in livery carriage or
automobile, on bicycle or on foot. But still stand-
[4]
Retrospective
ing at this northerly end of the Square, one can
leave these commonplace modern matters, and can
call up visions of many changes.
In 1850, or thereabout, the town was very differ-
ent. Only a few years before, Bronson Alcott had
brought his family to Concord, so he tells us, from
up-country on an ox-sled. So much for simple
traveling in the middle of the century. But the
railroad had just come to Concord too, competing
with old Deacon Brown's stage-coach that ran tri-
weekly to Boston, and with the stage-lines to the
west that, before the railroad, carried to or through
Concord as many as four hundred passengers a
week. On the Middlesex Grounds stood then the
Middlesex Hotel, many-columned, three-storied,
spick and span, and overflowing, in its season, into
the four other prosperous hostels which the town
maintained. For the county court came here twice
yearly for long sessions ; and the lawyers, their
clients, the uniformed court officers, and the various
hangers-on, with their inevitable bustle, gave the
Square the appearance of holding a fair. Here in
the crowd the future Doctor Jarvis, a lank boy
with an unforgettable voice, sold the gingerbread
of his father the deacon (baked under the building
which had been, and would be again, Wright's
[5]
Old Concord
Tavern) and received in change the counterfeit
quarter-dollar which cut sadly into the day's profits.
Years after, in a Boston bookstore, the voice re-
vealed him to his deceiver — not a sharper, but
another boy, and very hungry — who abated in
trade the twenty-five cents, as conscience money.
The Square's only formal planting in those days
was an oval grass-patch that broke the line of Bed-
ford Street and the Milldam. No obelisk was as
yet to be seen, and wheel tracks crisscrossed the
untended space where it was later to stand. The
buildings of the Colonial Inn were then three private
residences, in the right hand one of which, where the
Thoreau family had been brought up, still lived the
spinster sisters, aunts of Henry Thoreau. The
nucleus of the Christian Science church was then a
private house ; the Masonic lodge building had but
lately been the school where the young Thoreau
tried his famous experiment in flogging. There was
then no Catholic parish in Concord, and the priest's
residence was the "county house," the dwelling of
the keeper of the jail that stood behind — of which
also Thoreau had his taste. On the site of the
Catholic church stood the "green store" which
supplied ropes and disguises to the young men of
the town, when they marched down Lexington
[6]
The Unitarian Church
Retrospective
Road one dark night, intending to do a service to
Ralph Waldo Emerson. The Court-house was just
building in 1850; the Town Hall was not erected
till five years later. The Universalist church, which
since has vanished, then stood hard by in Bedford
Street ; it took its origin at the meeting called by
posted notice, summoning all persons in favor of
the universal salvation of all mankind to meet at
Bigelow's Tavern and choose officers. The Uni-
tarian church was in the early glory of its new belfry,
for it was but a few years since the building was
turned to face Lexington Road, the Grecian portico
added, and the slender spire removed. And Con-
cord, not then a suburb but a self-sufficing com-
munity, was a fine example of a thriving shire town.
As for tourists in the fifties, there were none.
To be sure, strangers came, but they were mostly
visitors of certain residents who all belonged to the
peculiar class of writers. The usefulness of some
of these inhabitants the town took the liberty of
doubting. The names of the freeholders among
them were marked on the town map of 1852.
"R. W. Emerson," whose house was at the junc-
tion of Lexington Road and the Cambridge Turn-
pike, the town indeed knew well. Was not his
grandfather here at the time of the Fight, he who
[9]
Old Concord
urged the militia to take their stand in the town
itself ? This William Emerson built the Manse a
few years before he went away to die in the Revolu-
tionary War ; and periodically young Ralph and his
brothers had visited here in the old house, under
the kindly eye of old Doctor Ripley, who married
their grandfather's widow. And since 1832, when
he came here to live, the philosopher had brought
credit to the town by his writings — except for his
antislavery notions. Yes, Emerson the town knew
well, and on the whole was proud of him.
"J. Thoreau's" name was marked, on the map,
against a house on Main Street. He too was a
dependable person, and had brought up his family
as a respectable man should. But his son Henry
turned out odd enough, even if his name were known
as far as New York, or even England. He had
never made his way in the world ; he would earn
only enough to keep him, though he was smart
enough when he improved his father's pencil-making
machinery. But having done that, he went out to
Walden Pond and spent two years alone in a shanty.
What could be done with such a man ?
Thus it was plain to the town that some of the
Concord folk whom strangers came to see were
rather queer. There was, for example, this "Nathl.
[10]
Retrospective
Hawthorne," whose name stood on the map against
the Lexington Road house which Mr. Alcott sold
when, following another of his strange ideas, he went
to Boston. Mr. Hawthorne was becoming cele-
brated, so people heard, from his book about a
scarlet letter; but he was so unsocial that he took
to the woods when people came to visit him.
Didn't he use to stand in his garden at the Manse
and dream, in full sight of the road, instead of
working ? The man lived in a dream ! When
Emerson's little son showed Mr. Hawthorne some
pictures of this very Square, he asked what place it
was ! And he had passed through it hundreds of
times.
Also this "W. E. Channing," who owned a house
on Main Street opposite Thoreau's : he might be a
poet, but he was as unsociable as Mr. Hawthorne,
and he walked more miles in the fields and woods
than any other man besides Henry Thoreau.
Naturally the town looked askance at the strangers
who came to visit these men. Some of the visitors
were certainly famous, and were inoffensive enough.
But others were mighty queer. Those men with
long hair, and women with short, and cranks with
schemes to make the world over, or with diets, or
methods of dress — Why, they swarmed like bees
["I
Old Concord
around Mr. Emerson's door, and the poor man
could hardly get rid of them. Transcendentalists
they called themselves — and no one could give a
satisfactory meaning to the word !
And there was surely smuggling of slaves through
Concord by means of the Underground Railroad.
Of course the men who took the risk were so cau-
tious that it would be hard to prove anything against
them ; but still, the town had its opinions. The
Thoreaus were abolitionists, parents and children ;
it was said that Henry hid slaves in his hut at
Walden. It was curious that when strange negroes
took the west-bound train, Henry Thoreau was
very likely to board it with them, buying tickets to
Canada but returning too soon to have used them
himself. Miss Mary Rice, the odd little spinster
who planted the lilies on John Jack's grave, was
said to have had a cubby-hole built in her house
for the special purpose of hiding runaways. And
Edwin Bigelow the blacksmith, who was on the
jury for trying those who took the slave Shadrach
away from his jailers in Boston — Edwin Bigelow
was the very man who harbored Shadrach in Concord
and drove him to Leominster on his way to freedom!
It was all a very dubious business and clearly
against the law. It was even a very ticklish matter
[12]
Retrospective
for young Mr. Frank B. Sanborn to have John
Brown, the Kansas abolitionist, here in Concord
to give an address. The frontiersman slept with a
big knife at his side and a brass-bound pistol under
his pillow. Next would come United States marshals
with warrants to arrest Concord citizens.
But though the grumblers did not so recognize it,
the mid-century period was a great one in Con-
cord's development. Great thoughts were being
conceived, great books being written, by her citi-
zens. And even those who took the conservative
stand, shaking doubtful heads at antislavery and
the Underground Railroad, were slowly being
trained to meet the day when, not far ahead, the
call should come for Concord's soldiers. The only
thing to depress them then was the rumor that the
company was not to be allowed to go. To be sure,
old David Buttrick had wise advice for his sons :
"Don't go now. This ain't to be a short war, and
the time will come when they'll pay a bonus." And
Humphrey Buttrick seemed to have taken the ad-
vice. He had a family to maintain, and withdrew
from the company, to the noisy scorn of a neighbor.
But when the time came to march, Humphrey pre-
sented himself, and the scorner was not there; so
his uniform was sent for, and Humphrey marched
[13]
Old Concord
away in it. And David, standing by his ox-team,
waved good-by to all his sons.
In the fifties, Concord seemed one large family,
intimately acquainted with each other's affairs.
There may have been family quarrels over politics,
over town offices, but they left no bad blood. Even
the question of temperance, which came nearer
home than slavery, made no feuds. The nearest
to a show of ill-feeling was roused by Doctor Bart-
lett, who through his practice knew most of the
evils of drink, and who attacked the rumsellers
unsparingly. Once his opponents took the nut
from his wheel, causing him a fall ; and once they
cut off the tail of his horse and slit his chaise cur-
tains to ribbons ; but horse and chaise the doctor
continued to drive as they were, to the shame of
his persecutors. A "character" the old doctor may
have been throughout the fifty-seven years of his
Concord practice; but he left an enviable record
of public and private service. And it needed char-
acter to rise to note in that place and time of strong
personalities, bred on New England soil, and with
all the Yankee characteristics not yet smoothed out
by prosperity and outside intercourse. The lives
of these men, written in Concord's Dictionary of
Biography, the Social Circle Memoirs, permit an
[14]
Retrospective
intimate view of a community kindly and helpful,
yet also shrewd, witty, penetrating in criticism,
and unsparing in attack.
Yet on the whole those were easy-going times.
Because Puritanism had gone by, and the stern call
of war had not yet come, there was still tolerance
for the two great inherited social evils, slavery
and intemperance. Ways of living were very
simple, in spite of new improvements in stoves,
and lamps, and imported luxuries. Easy-going days
those were, when the temperance lecturer was in-
vited by the committee to the hotel, and flip was
passed around. Easy-going when the judge, find-
ing that the jailer had taken his prisoners out hay-
ing, adjourned court till the work should be done.
Especially easy-going when the bank cashier left
the safe open when he locked the front door, and
so during his lunch-hour, one fine day, lost the
little sum of three hundred thousand dollars.
But let us go back another fifty years. In 1800
there was no railway; over the wretched roads (for
turnpikes were not yet general) struggled but a
single coach ; and the one daily mail and the weekly
newspaper were uncertain in their arrival. Concord
lived very much by itself. Though the county
courts sat here, in a smaller and quainter building,
[IS]
Old Concord
the volume of business was slight. There was no
level space for the Town Hall and Bedford Street;
but the flagpole on the ridge was already in danger
from the cutting in the gravel pit which would
finally grow big enough to make room for them.
The Meeting-house then faced the Square ; over
its portico was a graceful spire whose removal the
older inhabitants were later so much to regret,
offering in vain to replace it. By the tavern stood
the single little fire-engine house that served the
whole town. The Milldam was really a milldam,
and though the stores that lined it cut off the view
of the pond which business was soon to abolish, the
old mill was still in active use. The Middlesex
Hotel site held the Jail Tavern, hiding the old
stone jail. Beyond the County House was the
wooden schoolhouse where the brick one was later
to stand. The dwellings at the end of the Square
were used for trade, having little shops either in
their fronts or in sheds close by. The Square was
unplanted ; it was the Common then, and the only
visible object that broke its surface, except for the
elm on its eastern side — in those days used as a
whipping-post and even to-day holding somewhere
within its bark the staple to which offenders were
tied for punishment — was the town pump.
[16]
.J- v-'-'«-x^
ff^?
TO* 0« 7V« a* rt; 7ow« tfatf
Retrospective
Other differences could be seen in the town.
There was much more woodland, and the oaks on
top of Lee's Hill, until recently owned by the traitor
himself, had just been cut for the frigate which
they were building in Boston, to be named the
Constitution. And the life in Concord was very
simple. There was but one church, at which all
religious people assembled twice on Sunday for
three-hour services, "the old, cold, unpainted,
uncarpeted, square-pewed meeting-house," which
Emerson remembered so well, "with its four iron-
gray deacons in the little box under the pulpit,
with Watts' hymns, with long prayers rich with the
diction of ages, and not less with the report like
musketry from the movable seats." There were no
lectures, and the new library society must wait an-
other thirty-five years before it accumulated nine
hundred volumes. There were almost no amuse-
ments, scarcely even the pleasure of shopping, for
Concord stores were very few. But to make up for
this, Concord people were very busy with the work
of procuring their necessaries.
To begin with, a century ago, almost every one
in Concord, even the mechanics, the one doctor,
the one lawyer, and the minister himself, made much
if not all of his living by farming. This meant hard
[19]
Old Concord
and continuous labor, extending even to the women.
To preserve from spoiling, all beef and pork that
was not immediately eaten must be salted or cured,
for there was no ice. So every dwelling had its
brine barrel, and its smoke-house for the curing of
hams. There were candle-molds hanging in each
kitchen, in which the housewife could make four,
six, or a dozen candles at a time. There were other
implements also : the hackle, the flax-comb, the
wool-cards, the dye-pot, the wool-wheel, and the
spinning-wheel ; and in most houses there was still
the loom. And these, which were used for making
the clothes for the family, meant work for every
one. The flax was grown on the farm, the wool
was raised there, and the men (a hard-working,
hard-drinking race) cut the crop and sheared the
sheep, in the proper season. A little cotton was
bought or bartered. The women did the rest. The
rotted flax was hackled and combed, the cleaned
wool was carded into its little white rolls, the women
walked miles at the wool-wheel, or sat uncounted
evenings at the flax-wheel ; they dyed the skeins,
set up the loom, wove the woolen cloth, the linsey-
woolsey, the linen sheets and spreads and curtains.
Fine work they did, these ancestresses of ours, with
patterns handed down from their grandmothers, or
[20]
Retrospective
combined from ancient designs, expressing here, and
here only, their sense of the beautiful.
And for the children, the life was not easy. Early
and late they had to help their elders. At astonish-
ingly early ages the little girls were set to making the
samplers which nowadays we collect but cannot imi-
tate. School perambulated like the cobbler, from
district to district ; and the teachings were only of
the rudiments. The pleasure of reading was lack-
ing, for there were no magazines or story-books,
and even for the grown-ups there were no novels.
Tired little folk nodded by the fireside while the
parents gossiped or discussed theology, for the
Unitarian controversy was upon the land. Or the
children crept up-stairs to their chilly rooms, begged
for the warming-pan between the cold sheets, and
drew the bed-curtains close about. Romantic it
may be, seen through rose-colored spectacles a
hundred years later ; but at the time, the life was
sad and drab.
One feature of the period was the prohibition of
Sunday traveling. Deacons and other such severe
persons took it upon themselves to watch the roads
and to halt all travelers between Saturday and
Sunday sunset. Of Deacon White, who lived at the
corner of the Square and guarded Lowell Road,
[21]
Old Concord
they tell that on a Sunday morning he stopped a
teamster on his way home and forbade further
progress. The teamster tied his horses at the
deacon's gate, sat (smock frock beside broadcloth)
at church in the deacon's pew, ate of the deacon's
dinner, sat again through the afternoon service,
partook of the deacon's supper, until at last the
good man saw with relief that the sun was down
and bade his guest proceed. Years later Samuel
Hoar also was diligent in stopping travelers. One
farmer, ruefully studying the destruction caused
in his crops by a tornado, found his only relief in
the ejaculation : "I wish this tornado had come last
Sunday. I should have liked to see whether Sam
Hoar would have tried to stop it !"
Another fifty years back, to 1750, reveals less
change. Yet there were two notable differences, for
folk talked of their king and looked with friendly
interest upon traveling redcoats, asking them of
the war with France. People spoke of England as
"home." George the Third was not to come to
the throne for ten years ; and the days of Whig
and Tory, and of the fight for independence, were a
generation in the future. Concord was smaller,
even more isolated and provincial, with the houses
clustered in little villages. The Square was shape-
[22]
*z* ,'■ r
y & / '<^:-
TVs* OZi Cofonia/ /»»— Z)««o« ^^ Corner
Retrospective
less and neglected ; the Town House, the meeting-
house (barn-like, yet destined to harbor Harvard
College), the new little tavern, and the jail, were
the chief public buildings. There was the yearly
excitement of "seating the meeting-house," when
the parish committee was driven to its wits' end,
and the town stirred to its depths, by hurt and
angry feelings. But the home drudgery, the lack
of amusements, the sadness and drabness, were
more marked than later.
When we get to the year 1700, we find one other
factor in life : the unforgettable dread that the
Indians may swoop down, as was done to Concord's
neighbor in Philip's War, scarcely fourteen years
before, and as would be done to Deerfield yet.
The daily life was very laborious. And Concord
was very primitive, since the little meeting-house
was used for church, for town-meeting, and for a
court when necessary. As for hotels or taverns,
there were none, nor stores, nor much more than
bridle-paths for the pedlars who alone brought finery
to town.
Sixty-five years farther back, and there was —
wilderness.
But the place was not all forest. The three hills
were wooded, also the ridges that ran here and
[25]
Old Concord
there, and much of the land that lay fifteen feet or
more above the river level. Yet Concord's Great
Meadows were large, open spaces, almost free from
floods and fairly well drained, where (among the
sweet fern and straggly brush) stood each year
patches of maize. These were fertilized — five
herring to a hill — with the fish that came up the
Musketaquid River each year in spawning time.
The corn was planted and tended and reaped by
the squaws that came from the encampment under
the hill called Nashawtuc. And the fields had
once been seen by a white man who came with
Indian guides, and made marks in a book, and
disappeared in the direction of the settlements on
the coast.
And then, late in the fall of this year that the
white men called sixteen hundred and thirty-five,
out from the fringe of woods came more white
men on to the great meadows. They had no guides,
which accounted for the hardships of their journey
hither, for their torn clothes, scratched legs, and
boots marked with the slime of the swamps ; but
they walked all over the meadows with Tahatta-
wan the Musketaquid chieftain, shook hands with
him on some bargain, and seemed pleased. And
not far from the little brook which the Indians
[26]
Retrospective
dammed with a fish weir, and which perhaps the
beavers first dammed centuries before, where was a
mill site, and a sunny hillside close by, these white
men marked out plots of ground, and promising to
come again, plunged into the forest, this time with
a guide to show the shortest way to the settlements.
In the spring they came again, and more men
with them, and their wives and children and goods,
over the rough road that had been opened from
Watertown. This was a notable venture — that
men from civilized England should settle here,
twenty miles from the coast, twelve from navi-
gable water, surrounded by savages. But the need
of the day was for farming land, and all else was
forest ; so here came these adventurers, led by two
ministers and by a soldier turned trader, to bargain
with the Indians under the great tree on what was
some day to be Concord Square. The white women
huddled together at one side, their children beside
them. The squaws stood silent at another. And
beneath the tree sat the chiefs and the Squaw
Sachem and the medicine man, opposite the white
men who were no whit less grave ; and they smoked
the peace-pipe and discussed terms, until at last Mas-
ter Simon Willard, rising in his place, and " poynt-
ing to the four quarters of the world," declared
[27]
Old Concord
that the white men had bought three miles from that
place, east and west and south and north. The red
men agreed, and wampum and hoes and hatchets
were given ; and every Indian there stared with ad-
miration at the medicine man, who stalked about in a
suit of clothes, a hat with a white band, shoes, stock-
ings, and a great coat. But the white men noted
that this bargain had been made with the best of
good feeling, and that among their own company
there was very close fellowship ; so for these two
good reasons they changed the name of the place
from Musketaquid to Concord. There was no
thought that a war would some day begin there ;
only the hope that the peace of God would dwell in
that place.
The first year for the white men was a hard one.
In the side of the sunny hill they made dugouts to
last them until harvest, while they wrestled with
the root-encumbered soil, got out their timbers
from the woods, and built, first of all, the meeting-
house. The frail roofs leaked, fare was scanty,
the summer heat was new to them, the wolves got
all the swine, and the only meat they had was
bought from the Indians — venison and "rockoons."
But by winter their houses were framed and boarded
in, and a little crop was harvested. Concord had in-
[28]
Retrospective
deed to cut its bread very thin for a long season, but
the beginning had been made.
Of all the little company, our sympathy must go
out strongest to Peter Bulkeley, the leading minister.
Willard, his right-hand man, was a soldier and used
to hardship. John Jones, his colleague, lost heart
and went away. But Bulkeley, gently nurtured,
fought the fight through. He was a man of educa-
tion ; he had stood well in Puritan circles, until
forced by Charles I to leave his pulpit, a martyr
to his opinions. Moreover, being a man of prop-
erty and therefore taxable, he was forbidden to
emigrate. But he took the risk and slipped away.
If here in Concord meadows he saw a likeness to
his fertile Bedfordshire and its winding streams, the
resemblance was but slight. Here he dwelt by the
Square in a log house; his land was stubborn and
unfruitful at first; his money brought him no in-
come. Nay, he spent freely more than four of the
six thousand pounds which he brought to the colonies,
in the necessary outlay for those who came with him
to Concord. Friends he had in Boston and Cam-
bridge, but he might have been leagues from them as
well as miles, for all he saw of them. He wrote :
"I am here shut up, and do neither see nor hear."
His wife frightened him by a sickness, and anxiously
[29]
Old Concord
he watched over her in the uncomfortable attic,
until at last he could report that again she "began
to come down into the house." Besides all this, he
bore his people's burdens. The first of Concord's
many books contains his own published sermons,
in which he exhorts his people to holiness, evidently
seeing nothing else to stay them in their troubles.
Those troubles were not slight. Sheep could not
live unless cattle had first been pastured on the
land, and the cattle did very poorly on the meadow
grass. Apparently there were wet seasons when
the land was flooded and the crops suffered. The
people could not maintain their two ministers (for
Bulkeley, no longer rich, needed a salary) ; there
was even talk of abandoning the enterprise, and
the elders from Boston were called in conference
on the matter. Finally there came "a discord in
the church of Concord," caused apparently by
Bulkeley's "pressing a piece of charity" against
the stiff conscience of his colleague. So Jones led
away "the faint-hearted souldiers among them,"
and all we can guess of the ins and outs of the matter
is from Bulkeley's statement that by it he came :
"i. To know more of God. 2. To know more of
himself. 3. To know more of men."
Relieved of its excess of ballast, the enterprise
[30]
Retrospective
now showed promise of success. Minor troubles
were easily managed, sometimes by the peremptory
measures of those days. Poor Mr. Ambrose Martin
called the church covenant "a human invention,"
and was fined ten pounds. To secure the fine, the
officials took property which sold for twenty pounds ;
but the offender could not be persuaded to accept
the remainder, even though he came to want. The
tender conscience of Bulkeley led him to urge on
the governor a remission of the original fine; but
stern Endicott refused, and "our poore brother"
went destitute to his grave.
The Indians never threatened Concord; they
were, at least in early times, rather to be considered
as childlike dependents. As they failed to under-
stand that they had sold their fish-weir with the
land, a second bargaining seems to have been neces-
sary, in order that the white men might be free to
build their mill upon the brook. And so the be-
ginning of our Milldam was made. The personal
habits of the Indians grieved and sometimes vexed
their white brothers, until a sort of treaty was
drawn up, by which the Indians agreed to submit
themselves to fines and other simple punishments
for ordinary misdemeanors. But since the occasion
was too good not to improve for both religion and
[ 31 1
Old Concord
morality, the Indians were induced to promise to
"improve their time," to labor after "humilitye,"
to wear their hair "comely like the English," to give
up greasing themselves, not to howl and paint them-
selves when mourning, and to knock before entering
an Englishman's house.
Nevertheless, smile as we may at these simple
matters, there was a pathetic note in the Indians'
request that they be not forced to remove far from
their friends at Concord, but that they be allowed
to remain near by, in order to hear the word of
God, and not to forget to pray. So a settlement
was granted them in Nashoba, now Acton, but a
few miles away.
There was in early days a beginning of our Square.
Soon after Bulkeley's time, it became common
land. And we may be sure, as we look at it, that
Bulkeley trod it, and John Eliot, the apostle to
the Indians, through whose aid, doubtless, the
Concord Indians were so tamed. And Winthrop
and Dudley, brothers-in-law, must have come here,
for they owned land just outside the town and
gave their name to the boundary stone in the
brook in the east quarter, — the Two Brothers.
And hard times passed. The shapeless common,
the dam at the mill, saw the empty houses filled,
[32]
Retrospective
more people at meeting, prosperity. Bulkeley could
at last know that his great venture had succeeded.
His neighbors could look forward to a secure future.
Emerson mirrored their minds when he wrote :
" Bulkeley, Hunt, Willard, Hosmer, Meriam, Flint,
Possessed the land which rendered to their toil
Hay, corn, roots, flax, hemp, apples, wool, and wood.
Each of these landlords walked amidst his farm,
Saying, "Tis mine, my children's and my name's.
How sweet the west wind sounds in my own trees !
How graceful climb those shadows on my hill !
I fancy those pure waters and the flags
Know me, as does my dog: we sympathize.'"
[33]
Military Affairs
--^■~=^pj~jjfeA&iiJ- ki^~.
II
AS geography is the handmaid of strategy as
well as of trade, let us, before we leave this
post at the north end of the Square, master so
much of the plan of Concord as is necessary for a
clear understanding of its famous Fight. Coming
from Boston by way of Lexington, Lexington Road
(closely bordered for a mile on the right by a steep
ridge) leads into the Square at its farther end.
From the near left-hand corner, Monument Street
leads out again to the North Bridge, less than a
mile away. These two streets mark the essential
route of the British ; the ridge, which less steeply
borders Monument Street also, was a factor in the
doings of the day. Out of the Square, again, the
Milldam leads to the right, and by way of Main
Street takes travelers to the South Bridge. In
early times, there were no other bridges in the
town, and no other streets led from the Square.
The Town House (its site marked by the present
memorial stone at the west of the Square) Wright's
I 37]
Old Concord
Tavern, the Meeting-house, and the brick mill at
the end of the Milldam, were the chief buildings.
For some years previous to 1775, trouble had
been brewing in Massachusetts. Boston had ex-
perienced its Massacre and its Tea-party, and was
filled with the king's soldiers. Against them the
spirit of resistance was growing in the colony. The
line of cleavage in the people, dividing Whig from
Tory, showed itself very plainly in Concord. It
even cut into families. Daniel Bliss, the former
pastor of the town, had been a stout old loyalist;
but his children took different sides. Phebe, a
woman of strong character, married her father's
successor, young William Emerson, first of the
name in Concord, but of Bulkeley blood, and a
defender of the rights of the colonies. Phebe's
brother Daniel took the other side. A lawyer, he
upheld the law; the son-in-law of a prominent
Tory, he was strengthened by family influence.
His house stood on Walden Street; the dwelling
must have been nearly opposite the present post-
office, though then there were no buildings between
it and the mill-pond. Bliss was one of the justices
of the Court of Common Pleas, with the rest of
whom he was forced to promise to discontinue its
sittings. He had even to submit to being deprived
[38]
Military Affairs
of his tea, and had to be careful where he bought
any of his supplies ; for Concord, like other towns,
not only refused to buy goods imported from Eng-
land, but even threatened a boycott against all
who did buy any.
Bliss is well remembered for his share in a striking
scene that took place in the old meeting-house.
Conventions were frequent in those days ; they
were held in the big church, and at one of them
Bliss seized his chance to express his opinion, and
to utter his warning, on the course which the Whigs
were pursuing. His address was a good one, driven
home with forensic skill, wit, and biting sarcasm.
The wealth and power of Britain made her in-
vincible ; the fringe of colonists along the coast
could do nothing against her might ; they were
treading a dangerous way, and should turn back
before they were crushed. At the end of the
speech, there was such a silence that Bliss must
have believed himself successful. Then, since the
older men did not speak, slowly there rose from his
seat a young man in homespun, at the sight of
whom the eyes of all the Whigs brightened. He
began slowly, but as he gained confidence, his halt-
ing words began to come as freely as those of Bliss.
His ideals were higher, his appeal more thrilling.
[39]
Old Concord
A Worcester delegate, watching the frowning and
fretting Bliss, asked, "Who is that man ?"
"Hosmer, a mechanic."
"A mechanic ? Then how comes he to speak
such good English ?"
"Because he has an old mother who sits in the
chimney corner and reads English poetry all the
day long; and I suppose it is 'like mother like
son.' His influence over the young men is won-
derful, and where he leads they will be sure to
follow."
And follow they did. The response to Hosmer's
speech showed Bliss that the struggle must come.
There was left for him only to show that he be-
lieved in his own words.
This final test came to another Tory earlier than
to Bliss. On the farm where once dwelt "Simon
Willard, one of the founders of Concord," lived
Joseph Lee, the town's physician. Everything is
now changed about his place, even to the very
name ; for Lee's Hill is now Nashawtuc, two bridges
make useless the doctor's ford, and many modern
residences dot his acres. Lee was a man born for
opposition and hot water ; he had seceded from the
parish, forming with others what was derisively
called the Black Horse Church, because it met in
[40]
Military Affairs
the tavern of that name; and when the original
cause of quarrel had been removed, he made as
much uproar in trying to return as ever he had done
in seceding. Such a man was likely to take an
original path in revolutionary troubles ; and he did
so.
There came to town the news that Gage, the
governor in Boston, had seized the provincial pow-
der and cannon, and might shortly do — nobody
knew what. The occasion of reproving him, and at
the same time of removing some of the new unpopular
officers, was too good to be lost. From all towns
the militia companies, some actually under the be-
lief that Boston had suffered a second Massacre,
hurried toward Cambridge. Planning a night march,
Ephraim Wood, one of Concord's most important
men, invited the doctor to go, — perhaps as a test.
"My heart is with you," quoth the doctor, "but
I cannot go."
Yet at early darkness the doctor crossed the
ford; and when the company returned from its
successful journey, it was discovered that he had
been to Cambridge in advance of them. Sum-
moned and questioned — was it before one of
those impromptu meetings in the Square, to which
the town was then much given ? — he admitted
[41]
Old Concord
that he had given warning of the coming of the
militia.
The sequel was the humiliating declaration which
Lee publicly signed. "When I coolly reflect on
my own imprudence, it fills my mind with the
deepest anxiety. I deprecate the resentment of
my injured country, humbly confess my errors,
and implore the forgiveness of a generous and free
people, solemnly declaring that for the future I
will never convey any intelligence to any of the
court party, neither directly nor indirectly, by
which the designs of the people may be frustrated,
in opposing the barbarous policy of an arbitrary,
wicked, and corrupt administration."
Concord meeting-house became for a while the
center of interest for the whole of Massachusetts.
Let us remember that in those days the old church
stood lengthwise to the road, without bell or cupola
or external ornament ; but that it was roomier
even than at present, having two galleries that
accommodated all members of the Provincial Con-
gress which, late in 1774 and again early in 1775,
met here to plan the rebellion. Here the Congress
passed its resolve to stop the payment of taxes to
the king ; here it began the treasonable action of
raising and equipping an army. And in Concord
[42]
Military Affairs
began to accumulate those military stores which
the royal governor would have to seize if he wished
to cripple his disloyal subjects. It was at Concord,
therefore, that his first blow must be struck.
Foreseeing the great emergency, the province in-
creased its military strength. Its ancient militia
comprised every able-bodied man ; but now from
these were drawn new companies to make a mobile
force of young men, ready to spring to arms, and
to march as far and as swiftly as might be needed.
It was Concord which first created their form of
oath, "to hold ourselves in readiness at a minute's
warning with arms and ammunition." So the
Minutemen first came into being. At worship or
at work, their arms were always at hand.
The comic now intruded. Wearing disguises
which no Yankee could fail to penetrate, trudging
on foot, two British officers came to spy out the
land. They sketched a map of the roads, saw
what they could of the preparations for defence,
and asked their way to the house of Daniel Bliss.
A woman pointed across the Milldam to the house
that looked on the pond. A very comfortable
dinner they must have had with Bliss, glad as they
were to get out of the public gaze.
But Bliss can scarcely have been easy in his
[43]
Old Concord
mind, knowing that his guests had been marked to
his door. First the woman who had guided them
came, weeping because of her townsmen's threats
against her; then came a message for Bliss him-
self : he should not leave the town alive !
"What," asked his guests, "are the Yankees
ugly? Will they fight?"
Bliss pointed out the window. "There goes
my own brother. He will fight you in blood up
to the knees."
"Come away with us, then," urged the officers.
"We are armed and can protect you."
So by Lexington Road the three stole out of town
in the dusk, and Bliss never saw Concord again.
For him, comedy had become tragedy ; and for
the country, the whole great drama at last was
turning grimly earnest. Lexington Road, the
Square, and the Milldam, were to witness more
than this pathetic exit.
Paul Revere came frequently from Boston, bear-
ing messages from Joseph Warren to Hancock and
Samuel Adams and the other provincial leaders in
the Congress. On the fifteenth of April Revere
brought word that the British would move soon.
Much too slowly it was borne in upon the guardians
of the stores that it was foolhardy to wait longer.
[44]
Military Affairs
But when the word was given, Concord sprang to
tasks which had been designated at least a month
beforehand. Horses were hitched, carts trundled
on the highway, and at noon on the eighteenth of
April, powder and ball were loaded up for their
journey to places of greater safety. The "alarm
company," true to their oath, must remain on the
spot ; but the other men were busily driving the
carts away.
The work was too great to be done quickly, but
it was eagerly pushed. The powder must first
have been saved, for none whatever was captured.
But it must have been plain that the rest of the
stores — cannon, shot, bullets, and food — were
in danger. Over the roads, never too good, and
always soft in spring, the heavy carts labored.
The Square must have been a busy place till late
at night, and peace came slowly to the town.
Then the call of war came early. Young Doctor
Prescott, who had been visiting his sweetheart in
Lexington, and who was returning in company
with Paul Revere, bearing the fateful news of the
coming of the British, barely escaped when Revere
was captured by a patrol of English officers. By
a roundabout route he came to Concord with the
alarm, roused the guard at the Court-house, and
[45]
Old Concord
told his news. Alarm guns were fired, and the bell
was tolled. It is said that the first man to appear
in response was the minister, William Emerson,
his gun on his shoulder. And in a little while the
whole of the alarm company was there, parading
on the Square.
Wright's Tavern was the focus of excitement for
many hours, the small, square, hip-roofed building,
in those days without its present ell. Such or-
ganization as could be maintained was centered
there, where the officers and selectmen were ac-
customed to meet, and where now it was natural
to go for consultation. The work of saving the
stores was continued as best it could be, but the
absence of most of the teams made it impossible
to cart away all of the remaining deposits. Some
of them were concealed near by, under hay or brush,
or in the woods ; but at the mill and the malt-house
the barrels remained unhidden. One careful soul
saved the church silver by throwing it into the soap-
barrel at the tavern, whence it emerged so black that
no one but a silversmith could polish it.
The men who had yesterday gone away with the
teams at last began to come back with their mus-
kets ; the Minutemen from Lincoln arrived ; some
few came, as individuals, from other towns. The
[46]
The Wright Tavern
Military Affairs
commanders of this little body marched them to
the liberty pole on the hill, to wait there while a
detachment was sent to reconnoiter. Down Lex-
ington Road this company marched, past the spot
where Hoar had housed his Indians, past the place
where, in imagination, Hawthorne put the house
of Septimius Felton on that day, past the end of
the winding ridge that flanked the highway, and
out upon the Great Meadows toward Lexington.
And then, says private Amos Barret, who was of
the company, "we saw them coming." He leaves
us to imagine the scene as viewed from Meriam's
Corner : the Minutemen in homespun halting, the
British in their scarlet, gold, and flashing steel
advancing upon them across the level, sunlit
meadow.
The Minutemen marched back, their drums and
fifes playing defiantly — "and also the British.
We had grand musick," writes the simple private.
But the matter was more seriously viewed by the
leaders under the liberty pole, to whom flying mes-
sengers bore word of the overwhelming strength
of the regulars. One fiery soul spoke out.
"Let us stand our ground !" cried the minister.
How they must have loved him for it !
But there were strategists at the council, cuncta-
[49]
Old Concord
tors, delayers. Time would conquer these invaders
before night. The regulars came in sight, the
grenadiers on the road below, the light infantry-
advancing as flankers along the ridge, fiery eager
at the sight of the liberty pole and its defenders.
But the best possible disposition had been made of
the stores, the town was practically empty of its
inhabitants, and there was nothing to fight for.
And so the militia withdrew across the North Bridge,
to wait reinforcements on the slope of Punkatasset
Hill. As they passed the Manse, the minister
dropped out of the ranks, staying to defend his little
family.
It was the British who now occupied the Square.
Their commander, Smith, sent guards to the two
bridges, and a detachment across the North Bridge.
In the village, the remaining troops were busy,
ransacking all possible hiding-places and destroying
what they could. They found two cannon and
knocked off the trunnions ; they rummaged out a
quantity of wooden spoons and intrenching tools
and burnt them on the green ; at the malt-house,
they found the barrels of flour, broke some of them
open, and rolled the rest into the mill-pond.
But the barrels thus submerged were found,
when drawn out, to have protected their contents
[So]
Military Affairs
very well. Bullets flung into the pond were, when
salvaged, quite as good as ever. The quantity of
flour stored near the mill was saved by a trick.
Among them were some bags and barrels of the
miller's own, and when questioned by an officer,
he put his hand on these. "This is my flour," he
said. "I am a miller, sir. Yonder stands my
mill. I get my living by it. In the winter I grind
a great deal of grain, and get it ready for market
in spring. This is the flour of wheat, this is the
flour of corn, this is the flour of rye; this," and
again he touched his own property, "is my flour;
this is my wheat; this is my rye; this is mine."
The officer studied his countenance, and then, re-
marking that the miller seemed too simple to play
a trick, left the barrels untouched.
Beyond the mill, and beyond the burying-ground
on Main Street, stood Bigelow's Tavern, where
was stored a chest of papers and money belonging
to the treasurer of the province. As the soldiers
were about to search the chamber in which it lay,
a maid remonstrated, declaring that the room was
hers and contained her property. Again the par-
tial truth concealed a fact, and the chest was left
untouched.
On the Square, beside the Town House whose
[Si]
Old Concord
site is marked by a tablet, lived Martha Moulton,
"widow woman," seventy-one years old, whom
the general flight of neighbors had left alone with
an old man of more than eighty. A politic soul she
proved herself, submissive to the soldiers who de-
manded water, and to Major Pitcairn and the
other officers who sat on her chairs on the grass,
directing their men. She had even scraped a little
favor with them, so as to chat, "when all on a
sudden they had set fire to the great gun carriages
close by the house," and she saw smoke rising
from the Town House, "higher than the ridge."
Bravely she expostulated with them, would not be
rebuffed by sneers, pointed out the sure damage
to the row of buildings, and standing with a pail
of water in her hand, "put as much strength to
her arguments as an unfortunate widow could
think of," and so touched Pitcairn's heart. The
fire was extinguished by the soldiers who set it,
and for her services Martha Moulton was later
awarded the sum of three pounds by a grateful
province.
So far as is known, Amos Wright stayed by the
tavern to which, though his occupancy was the
shortest in its history, he gave his name. He had
been a schoolmaster ; later he was called captain :
[52]
Military Affairs
but on this day his business was to protect his
property by ready and obliging service to its tem-
porary possessors. For Smith made it his head-
quarters, and from it issued his orders. And when
from the North Bridge came the report that the
militia were gathering on the hill beyond in threat-
ening numbers, Smith may be pictured as leaving
the tavern to march on foot, "very fat, heavy
man" as he was, at the head of the reinforcing
detachment. Perhaps he wanted the relief of walk-
ing, after twenty miles of unaccustomed riding;
but at any rate, so a grumbler among his subor-
dinates recorded in his diary, "he stopt 'em from
being time enough."
Pitcairn was left in command at the tavern.
His fortune connected him closely with American
history at this period, for he fell bravely at Bunker
Hill. "Amiable and gallant," an opponent wrote
of him ; he was beloved by his men and respected
by his adversaries. But he is best known by a
remark which he made as he stood, it is interesting
to think, in front of the tavern, with his critical
eye upon the men who were still at their work
of burning the American supplies. Who reported
the remark ? No one so likely as the tavern keeper,
who brought him the glass of brandy and water —
[S3]
Old Concord
and sugar — which the major jovially stirred with
his finger.
"I hope so to stir the Yankee blood this day."
Was it then that he heard, from the direction in
which Smith had disappeared, the distant crash of
musketry ?
Satisfaction first, at the short sullen roll of the
regular volley. These homespuns were again, as
at Lexington, as at Boston five years before, being
taught their lesson. But next came, for the first
time, startling as the noise of a gigantic watchman's
rattle shaken by a warning hand, the sharp rever-
beration of the scattering reply.
What hasty orders shouted and reechoed, what
snatching up of weapons, what hurried forming of
ranks in the Square !
Meanwhile, the detachment sent to the North
Bridge had taken up its several duties. Three
companies pressed on beyond the bridge, and under
the guidance of one of those officers who had come
to visit Daniel Bliss, sought the house of Colonel
James Barrett, still standing on Barrett's Mill
Road. Barrett was the commander of the militia,
a man of sixty-four, disabled from much marching,
but active on horseback. The stores were largely
in his charge, and he had been very busy in re-
[54]
Military Affairs
moving them. On the retirement of the militia
from the town, he had hastily ridden home, given
directions concerning stores to be hidden on his
place, and had once more departed to join his men.
Those at the farm had been working hard. The
bed of sage was lifted, cannon wheels were planted
underneath, and the herbs replaced. Other ma-
terial was hidden under hay and manure. In the
garret were flints, balls, and cartridges, stored in
open barrels, in the tops of which, having no time
for removal, the womenfolk put a few inches of
feathers. Most valuable, however, were certain
cannon. These were hastily taken to the field, a
furrow plowed, and the guns laid in it; then they
were concealed by turning another furrow over
them. This work was finished while the regulars
were in sight, advancing on the farm.
Mrs. Barrett was equal to the emergency. Com-
posedly she gave leave to search the buildings, gave
food and water to the men, refused to provide
spirits to a sergeant. Thereupon Captain Parsons,
the commander of the party, forbade the man to
drink : he needed to be fit for duty, for there was
bloody work ahead, on account of the men killed
at Lexington. Mrs. Barrett refused pay for her
provisions, saying: "We are commanded to feed
[55]
Old Concord
our enemies." When they threw the money in
her lap, she remarked : "This is the price of blood."
The men found some gun carriages and piled them
for burning, near the barn. At this Mrs. Barrett
expostulated, and the material was removed to a
safer place. Of her son the captain demanded
his name and ordered him seized, to be sent to
England for trial. "He is my son," said Mrs.
Barrett, "and not the master of the house," and
so he was released. As the gun carriages were for
the second time about to be lighted, the noise of
firing was heard from the bridge, and Captain Par-
sons called his men together for the retreat.
In order to understand what happened at the
bridge, we need to remember that in those days
the present highway bridge did not exist, and that
the old bridge, now in its cul-de-sac, carried the main
road. Though now the approach is more closely
shaded by trees, the place is otherwise the same.
From its bend the sluggish stream flows under the
simple structure ; the meadows lie open to the sun ;
seldom are signs of industry in view. There is not
even the plash or murmur of quick water.
To this abode of peace, then, came the soldiers.
Captain Laurie, holding the bridge, disposed his
men according to his best skill. One company he
[56]
7%^ 0/i .E/trAa /on? j- i/ oiu* — 7A* ZTou^ with the Bullet Hole
Military Affairs
posted, mistakenly, across the river, where the
statue of the Minuteman now stands. Another
company he sent to the top of the ridge past which
he had come. Everything goes to show that the
country was then not so wooded as to-day, and
that men thus posted could see much. His third
company was, for a time at least, at the Elisha
Jones house, which stands opposite the Manse, one
of the very oldest houses in the town. In outline
it was much the same as to-day, with its two stories
and hip roof, and its shed connected with the house.
The soldiers swarmed in its dooryard and drank at
its well; they did not search the building, nor did
they suspect that its owner was in its cellar with a
loaded musket, ready to protect not only his family,
but also tons of the fish and beef which the soldiers
had come from Boston to destroy.
The soldiers appear also not to have molested the
Manse. There the minister remained with his
family, one of whom (that Mary Moody Emerson
to whom the philosopher was later to owe so much)
used to boast that she was "in arms at the Fight."
But there was no joking at the time ; the minister
could have seen very little good cheer in his view
of the redcoats on two sides of his house.
The militia, on leaving the town, had crossed the
[59]
Old Concord
bridge and waited on Punkatasset Hill for the rein-
forcements which speedily came. More Concord
men returned from their journeys with the stores ;
and singly or in companies, men came in from
Bedford, Acton, Westford, Chelmsford, and Carlisle.
Joseph Hosmer, whom we have seen defeating
Daniel Bliss in debate, was made adjutant of the
muster. Growing more confident as his strength
increased, Colonel Barrett ordered the provincials
down to the neighborhood of the house of his major,
Buttrick. The militia and Minutemen formed at a
spot marked to-day by a tablet in the wall of Liberty
Street, whence the riflemen among them might have
dropped their bullets among the guard at the bridge.
At this movement of the provincials, the regulars
were alarmed. Captain Laurie called in his two
outposts, and the three companies formed at the
head of the bridge, still mistakenly on the same
side as the militia, without protection of any sort.
The captain sent to Smith his summons for rein-
forcements, while the Americans still lingered be-
hind the breastwork of a wall, not ready to take
the responsibility of an attack. A great responsi-
bility ! For they were still subjects of the king,
bred in the Englishman's dislike of change, and
open to the vengeance of the strongest power on
[60]
Military Affairs
earth. The news from Lexington had not yet
certainly reached them. And so they hesitated,
the higher officers consulting with some of the
civilians as to what should next be done.
It was now, not long after nine o'clock of that
fine morning — the sun still as bright as when
prophetic Samuel Adams, at dawn in Lexington,
had called it glorious ; the grass, in that early
spring, mid-leg deep in the field below — it was now
that Hosmer, the adjutant, saw large clouds of
smoke rolling up above the town. His soul took
fire ; he went to the council of his superiors and
demanded, pointing to the smoke : "Will you let
them burn the town down ?"
The captains immediately begged to be sent
against the bridge. Smith, of Lincoln, offered to
dislodge the British. Davis, of Acton, said, "I
haven't a man that's afraid to go." The responsi-
bility of the order rested with Barrett, the colonel,
and manfully he took it. He ordered Buttrick to
lead his men at the bridge, with the caution not to
fire unless fired upon. For every provincial in
Massachusetts was drilled in the precept that the
king's troops must shed the first blood. The Acton
company took the lead in columns of twos ; pres-
ently Captain Brown's Concord company pressed
[ 61 ]
Old Concord
up abreast of it; behind was the second Concord
company, and then the remaining troops, their
order directed by the mounted colonel. In front
marched Buttrick, and with him Lieutenant-colonel
Robinson of Westford, to whom Buttrick had of-
fered the command, but who preferred to march
as volunteer. Thus they bore down upon the
bridge.
At the first movement of the Americans, Captain
Laurie, perceiving the weakness of his position,
hastily withdrew his men across the bridge, and
formed them clumsily once more, the companies
one behind the other, "so that only the front one
could fire." At the captain's order, some of the
men began to take up the planks of the bridge, an
act quite of a piece with all that he had done, since
he thus would endanger the retreat of the detach-
ment at Colonel Barrett's. Buttrick, raising his
voice, shouted to the British to desist.
At this, two or three shots were fired by the
British into the river, signal or alarm guns, to
which the Americans paid no attention. A shot
was fired at Buttrick himself ; it passed between
him and Robinson, and wounded two men behind.
Davis, the Acton captain, stepped to one side to
be clear of his men, and prepared to fire, when im-
[62]
Military Affairs
mediately the British volley rang out. Davis fell,
and with him one of his men. Some few were
wounded, the rest untouched by the bullets that
went overhead. Said Amos Barrett : "The balls
whistled well."
Over in the Manse the minister, his soul on fire,
had but one dread : that the volley would not be
returned.
He need not have doubted. Buttrick sprang
from the ground as he turned to the ranks. "Fire,
fellow-soldiers, for God's sake, fire !" The order
was doubtless modified by the company commanders.
Says Barrett : "We were then all ordered to fire that
could fire and not kill our own men." The minister
heard the response and saw the result. Leaving
two of their privates dying on the ground, with half
their officers wounded, and many of their men, the
regulars retreated in haste, around the bend in the
road and past the Elisha Jones house.
Here Jones, roused from his concealment in the
cellar, threw up an upstairs window to fire on the
retreating redcoats. But his wife clung to him,
showed him the danger to the family, and took
away his gun. Then Jones, in scornful triumph,
showed himself at the door of his shed, to sneer at
the beaten troops as they crowded by, some bind-
[63]
Old Concord
ing up their wounds, some aiding their limping
comrades. One of the British, observing him, fired
hastily as he passed. The bullet passed through
the wall 'at his right and glanced out through the
rear into the hillside. The front wall shows its
hole to this day.
The Americans, coming in pursuit, saw the fugi-
tives join Smith's party. After some hesitation,
the regulars retreated. Smith thus left Captain
Parsons and his detachment to their fate. The
provincials could have intercepted them. But not
yet had the rebels realized that, as has been said,
while the men to whom Buttrick gave his order
were subjects of King George, the men who fired
and who pursued were citizens of another country.
Not yet did they feel that this was war. The three
companies were allowed to pass on their hasty re-
treat, the guard from the South Bridge came in,
and the whole force of regulars was gathered in the
village.
Here they were too strong for the Americans ;
and besides, they could burn the town. But time
was still working for the militia. Therefore nothing
was done by them while Smith, by futile marchings
and countermarchings, displayed, as the minister
wrote in his diary, "great fickleness and inconstancy
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Military Affairs
of mind." The British commander was perhaps
waiting for the reinforcements for which he had
sent; but at last, being but too well aware that
the country was aroused against him, and that he
must start soon if he wished to reach Boston at all,
about noon he began his retreat.
The troops marched out of the town as they had
entered, by Lexington Road. For a mile this is
bordered by the ridge which we have repeatedly
noticed ; and to prevent attack from this vantage
point, Smith sent his flankers along it. It was on
this ridge, where Hawthorne later wore his path,
that he set the scene of Septimius Felton's duel
with the British officer.
"While the young man stood watching the march-
ing of the troops, he heard the noise of rustling
boughs, and the voices of men, and soon under-
stood that the party, which he had seen separate
itself from the main body and ascend the hill, was
now marching along on the hill-top, the long ridge
which, with a gap or two, extended as much as a
mile from the village. One of these gaps occurred
a little way from where Septimius stood. . . . He
looked and saw that the detachment of British was
plunging down one side of this gap, with intent to
ascend the other, so that they would pass directly
over the spot where he stood ; a slight removal to
one side, among the small bushes, would conceal
him. He stepped aside accordingly, and from his
[6 S ]
Old Concord
concealment, not without drawing quicker breaths,
beheld the party draw near. They were more in-
tent upon the space between them and the main
body than upon the dense thicket of birch-trees,
pitch-pines, sumach, and dwarf oaks, which, scarcely
yet beginning to bud into leaf, lay on the other side,
and in which Septimius lurked.
"[Describe (says Hawthorne's memorandum) how
their faces affected him, passing so near; how strange
they seemed.]
"They had all passed, except an officer who
brought up the rear, and who had perhaps been
attracted by some slight motion that Septimius
made, — some rustle in the thicket ; for he stopped,
fixed his eyes piercingly towards the spot where he
stood, and levelled a light fusil which he carried.
'Stand out, or I shoot,' said he.
"Not to avoid the shot, but because his manhood
felt a call upon it not to skulk in obscurity from
an open enemy, Septimius at once stood forth, and
confronted the same handsome young officer with
whom those fierce words had passed on account of his
rudeness to Rose Garfield. Septimius's fierce Indian
blood stirred in him, and gave a murderous excitement.
"'Ah, it is you !' said the young officer, with
a haughty smile. 'You meant, then, to take up
with my hint of shooting at me from behind a hedge.
This is better. Come, we have in the first place the
great quarrel between me, a king's soldier, and you
a rebel ; next our private affair, on account of
yonder pretty girl. Come, let us take a shot on
either score !'
"The young officer was so handsome, so beau-
tiful, in budding youth ; there was such a free, gay
[ 66 ]
Military Affairs
petulance in his manner; there seemed so little of
real evil in him; he put himself on equal ground
with the rustic Septimius so generously, that the
latter, often so morbid and sullen, never felt a
greater kindness for fellow-man than at this moment
for this youth.
"'I have no enmity towards you,' said he; 'go
in peace.'
"'No enmity!' replied the officer. 'Then why
were you here with your gun amongst the shrub-
bery ? But I have a mind to do my first deed of
arms on you ; so give up your weapon, and come
with me as prisoner.'
"'A prisoner !' cried Septimius, that Indian fierce-
ness that was in him arousing itself, and thrusting
up its malign head like a snake. 'Never ! If you
would have me, you must take my dead body.'
'"Ah, well, you have pluck in you, I see, only it
needs a considerable stirring. Come, this is a good
quarrel of ours. Let us fight it out. Stand where
you are, and I will give the word of command.
Now ; ready, aim, fire ! '
"As the young officer spoke these three last words,
in rapid succession, he and his antagonist brought
their firelocks to the shoulder, aimed and fired.
Septimius felt, as it were, the sting of a gadfly pass-
ing across his temple as the Englishman's bullet
grazed it ; but, to his surprise and horror (for the
whole thing scarcely seemed real to him), he saw
the officer give a great start, drop his fusil, and
stagger against a tree, with his hand to his breast."
Past the scene of this imaginary duel, past the
ridge itself and out into the open, the regulars
[ 67 ]
Old Concord
marched. At Meriam's Corner the meadow be-
gins, and there comes in the old road from Bedford.
As the British left the corner, down from the ridge
came marching the front rank of the pursuing
Americans, while the Bedford road was filled with
the alarm companies from Reading and Billerica.
The British rear-guard halted, turned, and fired on
their pursuers. The Americans responded so ac-
curately that the regulars fled again. "When I
got there," says Barrett, " a great many lay dead,
and the road was bloody."
Another mile, and the British were out of Concord
territory ; but in that mile they got their taste of
that which was to come. From wall and thicket,
from hill-top and wood, bullets came from unseen
marksmen. Here and there were flitting figures ;
but no regiment stopped the road, nor did any
visible body of troops present such a challenge as
the honor of the regulars would allow them to ac-
cept. Men dropped in the ranks, Pitcairn was
wounded and lost his horse, the officers had to turn
their swords upon their own weary and demoralized
men to keep them from headlong flight, and it is
said that Smith would have surrendered before
reaching Lexington could he have seen any one of
sufficient rank to whom to offer his sword. And
[68]
r 0h
The Monument of 1836, and across the Bridge the "Minute Man'
Military Affairs
when at last in Lexington the fleeing redcoats met
the relieving column under Lord Percy, they flung
themselves for rest on the ground, their tongues (in
the words of their own historian) hanging out of
their mouths like those of dogs after a chase. A
little rest under the protection of Percy's cannon,
fifteen miles more of flight and chase, and the troops
reached their own lines, not again to leave them
until they were driven from Boston, eleven months
later.
Such was, for Concord, the day of the Concord
Fight. The numbers engaged were small, the losses
on either side were comparatively unimportant,
but the act was immensely significant. The his-
tory of a continent had changed.
But as we look at French's noble statue of the fine
young Minuteman leaving the plow in the furrow to
start with his rifle for the beginning of a great war,
we must not allow ourselves to suppose that in-
dividual impulse guided or decided the events of
the day. True, the citizen soldiery was from its
youth accustomed to the rifle, and the harrying
tactics of the pursuit necessarily depended on the
skill of the separate men. But even this was guided
by method, and the action of the day had been
foreseen and planned long in advance. The organiza-
[71]
Old Concord
tion of the Minutemen was months old; through-
out the province the regimental rosters were
complete ; each company knew its meeting-place and
the shortest route to the line of the British march.
And at Concord the wise strategy of the day was
decided by the elder officers ; there was nothing
haphazard in either the delay or the attack. The
courage and initiative of the Minuteman are indeed
worthy to be commemorated in bronze; but we
must remember that his less striking qualities, his
cool foresight, and his wise and thorough prepara-
tion, in reality decided the day.
In the fight and pursuit, no Concord man was
killed. Of the town's four wounded, three were its
captains. Immediately began the long experience
of divided families, the sending of supplies, the care
of the wounded. Of those who went away to death,
the finest was William Emerson, who as chaplain
went to Ticonderoga, sickened, and died on his way
home. At home the two prominent men were
Ephraim Wood and Joseph Hosmer, whose work in
regulating the community and in gathering stores
for the army was many times worth their possible
services at the front. During the year of Boston's
siege, Harvard College was located in Concord, the
recitations being held in the Court-house and the
[72]
Military Affairs
church. Concord stories of that dreary war period
are few. Said one wary individual after the Fight,
"For myself I think I will be neutral these times."
His indignant neighbors took his name from the
jury box and denied him his rights as a citizen.
The estate of Daniel Bliss was confiscated. And
Joseph Lee came a second time under the unfavor-
able notice of his townsmen. He was ordered to
keep the bounds of his own farm, being warned that
"if he should presume to go beyond the bounds and
should be killed, his blood be upon his own head."
The canny doctor stayed carefully at home and
managed to survive the war, in spite of the habit of
his neighbors to discharge their guns in the direction
of his house whenever the spirit moved them.
The rest of Concord's military history is the same
as that of all the New England towns which sent
their men to later wars. Her glory must always
center at the North Bridge. Yet, curiously enough,
for a long time the place was neglected. The high-
way was changed, the bridge removed, interest in
the spot was suffered to lapse, and not until 1836
was a memorial set on the spot where the British
had stood : the weathered granite monument which,
impressive in its plainness, bears its proud inscrip-
tion commemorating the first forcible resistance to
[73]
Old Concord
British aggression. By the wall lie buried the two
British privates killed in the Fight, over whom for
more than a century and a quarter there was no
other memorial than the words "Grave of British
Soldiers" carved on an unfinished slab. The
present slate tablet, with the verses fronr James
Russell Lowell's fine poem, was placed in position
only recently. In 1875, the centennial of the Fight,
the bridge was rebuilt, and on the farther bank,
where the militia had stood, was erected Daniel
Chester French's noble Minuteman. But the
monuments subdue themselves to the landscape.
The rustic surroundings of the bridge shade and
soften bronze figure and granite shaft ; only in the
spring floods does the river change its placid mood ;
and the visitor to the scene of Concord Fight, the
spot where America altered her destiny, is tempted
to muse upon a scene of peace rather than to kindle
his spirit in memory of war.
[74]
^^r H'f%
Graves of British Soldiers
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Ill
TO fit Concord's history with her geography,
let us trace once more the lines of her streets,
in order to point out the buildings of chief interest.
Radiating, as the streets do, irregularly from the
Square, they make it difficult for the visitor to re-
duce them to a system, or even for Concord resi-
dents to tell, offhand, the points of the compass.
It is therefore better, at the opening of our chapter,
to explain at once the general plan of the town,
more carefully than was needed for the story of the
Fight, yet simplified from the intricacies of modern
Concord. With this in mind, Concord's literary
history can be more clearly followed. So again let
us begin at our north end of the Square.
At the left hand, by the Court-house, we have
already noted the beginning of Monument Street,
which for long was the only road to towns lying to
the north. (Lowell Road, starting at our right, is
a short cut, generations younger.) Monument
Street curves away over a gentle rise; it borders
[79]
Old Concord
fertile meadows, so here lay some of the earliest
farms. And here, where the old road took a sharp
turn to the right, to meet the river, two of the an-
cient houses face each other, — the Manse among
its fields, and the Elisha Jones house at the foot of
the ridge. Between them the modern highway runs
directly onward to the later bridge.
Again from the left hand of the Square, between
the Town Hall and the Catholic church, starts Bed-
ford Street, not old, but much traveled by the
tourist on his way to Sleepy Hollow Cemetery.
Immediately behind the Town Hall is the yellow
house in which Elizabeth Alcott died. A short
stretch of Bedford Street, up a gentle rise, leads
to the gate of the oldest portion of the cemetery.
Or following the curve of Bedford Street a couple
of hundred yards farther, one comes to the gate
that leads to Sleepy Hollow itself.
At the end of the Square, we have seen the be-
ginning of Lexington Road, with Wright's Tavern
and the Meeting-house at its right. These two
buildings are of Revolutionary rather than of mod-
ern interest ; unfortunately the handsome church
is only a reproduction of the old building burned in
1900. Opposite them stands the picturesque old
stucco dwelling now appropriately fitted up as the
[80]
/■rr^'is^w--
"./: - x -V
s , ,
The Old Chapter House of the D. A. R.
Chiefly Literary
chapter house of the Daughters of the American
Revolution. The wide street stretches on, past
the plain old house that now contains the collection
of the Antiquarian Society, to the turn where still
stands the Heywood house. Round this turn and
past this house swept, so many years ago, the flash-
ing battalions of King George, coming on their
fruitless errand. As we go past this Heywood
corner there opens up, across a gently sloping field
to the right, the view of a white house behind a line
of lofty pines and chestnuts. It stands near the
road behind another screen of trees ; its plain dig-
nity and refinement seize the attention and stir
imagination. This is the Emerson house, sheltered
yet approachable, pleasing with its fine background
of fertile meadow fringed with distant trees.
Lexington Road winds gently on, over a little
rise where another fine old house stands below the
ridge which, — higher or lower, but always close at
hand, — borders the highway at the left. Beyond
this Moore house, the road dips and sweeps a little
to the left ; and here in a bay, as it were, of the high-
way, and in a hollow made by a little recession of
the hill, stands a brown house behind two great
elms, a large house, homelike although old-fash-
ioned, hospitable even if unoccupied. This is the
[83]
Old Concord
"Orchard House" of the Alcotts, now a museum
to their memory. The ridge rises, the trees de-
scend and gather thickly, some even stand close
to the road as if to hide a house that stands crowded
between it and the hill. It is Hawthorne's "Way-
side," which the wood seems almost to draw into
its dark depths. The effect is carefully preserved
by "Margaret Sidney" (Mrs. Daniel Lothrop), the
present owner of the property. But the little
cottage close beyond rejects the spell, its white
cosiness defying gloom. The tablet in front of the
enclosed trellis tells that here was bred the Concord
grape. On winds the road below the ridge, until,
a mile and a half from the village, the hill abruptly
stops. Here the Great Meadows stretch into the
distance, the road strikes out across their sunny
width, and a tablet in the wall reminds us that
here, at Meriam's Corner, was the field of a bloody
encounter.
Returning to the Square, we take the fourth street,
the Milldam. At the end of its short length, Walden
Street branches abruptly to the left. Speedily quit-
ting the clustered buildings of the town, this street
leads across a mile of Concord's level meadows until
it begins to climb a wooded slope. The ascent is
Brister's Hill, named for the bygone freedman
[84]
Chiefly Literary
whose cabin and spring near the foot of the hill
Thoreau described. In the woods to the left lies
"Fairyland" with its pond, beloved in Concord
for its natural beauty and its earliest skating.
Members of the "Walden Pond Association" (those
members of the literary circle of fifty years ago
whose Sunday walks took them to nature rather
than to church) knew "Fairyland" well. To the
right of the road lie Walden woods, and a quarter
of a mile farther along the road, after reaching the
top of the rise, the view of the pond itself opens
through the trees. Walden lies in a deep basin,
wooded, irregular, very pleasing. It has no inlet
and no outlet ; it is often (a natural curiosity)
higher in summer than in spring. Except for the
ancient settlement whose decay Thoreau chronicles,
and a deserted picnic ground, only the naturalist
himself has built on Walden's shores, and even his
cabin has gone. Bathers come sometimes to Wal-
den, or solitary fishermen ; but mostly its expanse
is silent and deserted. To reach the cairn that
shows the site of Thoreau's cabin, the visitor, after
climbing Brister's Hill, should take the first road
to the left, and turn first to the left and then to the
right. He will find himself by the shore of Thoreau's
cove, with the cairn above him in its little hollow.
[8 5 ]
Old Concord
From the point where Walden Street began,
Main Street continues the line of the Milldam.
The house beyond the bank building, setting back
from the street, tradition claims to have been a
blockhouse; certainly the thick walls of the original
structure were once suitable for defence. Next lies
an old burying-ground, perhaps as ancient as the
one upon the hill. At the fork where Sudbury
Road branches to the left, stands the Public Library,
a brick building of the Gothic type, soon to be re-
modeled. Opposite, on Main Street, begins the
series of buildings connected with the Hoar family,
so important in Concord. And on the left of the
street, the third house beyond Belknap, stands the
yellow house which Thoreau rebuilt with his father,
where he spent his last years, and where the two
famous Alcotts, father and daughter, lived in the
period of their own decline. Following Main Street
farther, Thoreau Street and Nashawtuc Road meet
at the next corner ; then Elm Street branches off,
and leading to the river nearly a mile from the
Square, leads also to the house inhabited by Frank
B. Sanborn, standing on the right bank. Main
Street itself crosses the river by the South Bridge,
passes under the railroad track, and shows beyond
(the second house on the right) the Alcott "Cot-
[86]
The Thoreau-Alcott House
Chiefly Literary
tage." In Little Women, this is described as Meg's
"Dovecote"; but in fact none of the Alcotts lived
in it except at their earliest visit to Concord.
Such, following each road to its farthest important
landmark, is the plan of literary Concord. If the
visitor mentally will reduce the map of the town to
these few elements, he will be able to follow easily
the remainder of our story.
The Old Manse comes nearest to connecting
Concord's military and literary annals. For while
it was built by the martial minister, and while from
its windows was seen the flash of the guns at the
bridge, it is also closely linked with the names of
Concord writers. Its aspect would not prepare
one for its distinction. Well withdrawn from the
road, with its modest gambrel roof, its weather-
beaten clapboards, its partial screen of trees and
shrubs, the gray house, as if in melancholy brooding
over its past, seems to retire from the wayfarer's
gaze. It sets low ; there are no wide lawns or
ornamental planting to challenge attention : the
surroundings of the venerable building still recall
the time when its fields maintained its owners.
And that is right, for here, if anywhere, have been
plain living and high thinking.
Built in 1765, the Manse after eleven years passed
[89]
Old Concord
to the ownership of William Emerson's widow, who
after two more years married his successor. For
sixty-three years Ezra Ripley ruled, as still in his
days a minister could do, over a respectful parish.
Simple, downright, a believer in his calling and
himself, even in his oddities he typified the ancient
school of which he was almost the last example.
Openly from the pulpit, or privately to the ear of
his parishioners, he spoke with the authority of
his office, guided by a knowledge that did not come
of books, and a kindness of heart that always dis-
tinguished him. Not experienced in the ways of
the outer world, he could be deceived by any travel-
ing swindler ; but in the difficulties and even the
etiquette of parochial life, no one had a clearer eye
or surer speech. When after a return from a prison
term a Concord man made a social call, Doctor
Ripley received him kindly; but when a fellow
minister appeared Doctor Ripley said to the first
comer: "Mr. M., my brother and colleague has
come to take tea with me. I regret very much the
causes (which you know very well) which make it
impossible for me to ask you to stay and break
bread with us."
When the highway was changed, and the old North
Bridge removed, the abandoned road became [a field
[90]
Chiefly Literary
belonging to the Manse. With this field we may as-
sociate two stories of the good old doctor. He took
an innocent pride in his possession of the famous
ground, and it was his pleasure to have his hired
man ask in the presence of guests into what field
he would have the cow turned. "Into the battle-
field," would be the reply, always effective in bring-
ing conversation to the favorite subject. And it
was perhaps in this very field that Emerson, haying
with the old gentleman, saw his pleading, almost
reproachful glances at the approaching thunderstorm.
"He raked very fast, then looked at the cloud,
and said, 'We are in the Lord's hand; mind your
rake, George ! We are in the Lord's hand ' ; and
seemed to say, 'You know me, this field is mine
— Dr. Ripley's, thine own servant !'"
The old clergyman gave back the ancient road-
way to the town for the dedication of the monument
of 1836, the occasion for which Emerson wrote his
beautiful hymn, one verse of which stands engraved
on the base of the Minuteman statue of 1875.
Plain speech accompanied Doctor Ripley's tales
of the parish, which no man knew better than he.
"I remember, when a boy," says Emerson, "driving
about Concord with him, and in passing each house
he told the story of the family that lived in it ; and
[91]
Old Concord
to the ownership of William Emerson's widow, who
after two more years married his successor. For
sixty-three years Ezra Ripley ruled, as still in his
days a minister could do, over a respectful parish.
Simple, downright, a believer in his calling and
himself, even in his oddities he typified the ancient
school of which he was almost the last example.
Openly from the pulpit, or privately to the ear of
his parishioners, he spoke with the authority of
his office, guided by a knowledge that did not come
of books, and a kindness of heart that always dis-
tinguished him. Not experienced in the ways of
the outer world, he could be deceived by any travel-
ing swindler; but in the difficulties and even the
etiquette of parochial life, no one had a clearer eye
or surer speech. When after a return from a prison
term a Concord man made a social call, Doctor
Ripley received him kindly; but when a fellow
minister appeared Doctor Ripley said to the first
comer: "Mr. M., my brother and colleague has
come to take tea with me. I regret very much the
causes (which you know very well) which make it
impossible for me to ask you to stay and break
bread with us."
When the highway was changed, and the old North
Bridge removed, the abandoned road became ^a field
[90]
Chiefly Literary
belonging to the Manse. With this field we may as-
sociate two stories of the good old doctor. He took
an innocent pride in his possession of the famous
ground, and it was his pleasure to have his hired
man ask in the presence of guests into what field
he would have the cow turned. "Into the battle-
field," would be the reply, always effective in bring-
ing conversation to the favorite subject. And it
was perhaps in this very field that Emerson, haying
with the old gentleman, saw his pleading, almost
reproachful glances at the approaching thunderstorm.
"He raked very fast, then looked at the cloud,
and said, 'We are in the Lord's hand; mind your
rake, George! We are in the Lord's hand'; and
seemed to say, 'You know me, this field is mine
— Dr. Ripley's, thine own servant ! ' "
The old clergyman gave back the ancient road-
way to the town for the dedication of the monument
of 1836, the occasion for which Emerson wrote his
beautiful hymn, one verse of which stands engraved
on the base of the Minuteman statue of 1875.
Plain speech accompanied Doctor Ripley's tales
of the parish, which no man knew better than he.
"I remember, when a boy," says Emerson, "driving
about Concord with him, and in passing each house
he told the story of the family that lived in it ; and
[91]
Old Concord
especially he gave me anecdotes about the nine
church members who had made a division in the
church in the time of his predecessor, and showed
me how every one of the nine had come to a bad
fortune or a bad end." At a certain funeral he
spoke fearlessly to the inheritor of the family re-
sponsibilities, a man whose temptations sometimes
overcame him. "There is no man of this large
family left but you ; and it rests with you to bear
up the good name and usefulness of your ancestors.
If you fail — Ichabod, the glory is departed ! Let
us pray." Of sot or spendthrift, of any one in
whose conduct there was a flaw, the doctor never
hesitated to demand an explanation in order to cure
the fault.
In his little study, square, wainscoted, with the
beams showing, he must have written thousands
of sermons — "it is awful," says Hawthorne, "to
reflect how many." The Manse ghost is a fiction
of Hawthorne's, who pretended that he heard it
sighing, or turning over sermons. "Once, while
Hilliard and other friends sat talking with us in the
twilight, there came a rustling noise as of a min-
ister's silk gown, sweeping through the very midst
of the company so closely as almost to brush against
the chairs."
[92]
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To the Manse came the young Emersons to visit
with their step-grandfather. And it may have
been at the door of the house that the old minister
said to the young Ralph Waldo, on parting after a
bereavement which had severed the last blood-
relationship between them: "I wish you and your
brothers to come to this house as you always have
done. You will not like to be excluded ; I shall not
like to be neglected."
Consequently it was to the Manse that Emerson
turned his steps after he had himself withdrawn
from the ministry and was following his new for-
tunes. "Hail," he wrote here, "to the quiet fields
of my fathers." Here he lived ; and here he wrote
the first of his great books, Nature. Even after
he had left the Manse for a dwelling of his own,
and after Doctor Ripley's death, he was still a visitor
at the old house, where he was drawn by the enigma
of Hawthorne's personality.
For Hawthorne, not yet famous, had rented the
Manse not many months after the decease of the
old clergyman. Apparently it attracted him from
the first, by its individuality and seclusion. He
describes with gusto the antique character of its
interior and furnishings, and feels secure, in its
privacy, against the passing stranger who from the
[ 93 ]
Old Concord
road could thrust his head into other domestic
circles. Doubtless Hawthorne was attracted by
the "most delightful little nook of a study" in the
rear of the house, facing west and north on the
orchard and the river, its window-panes cracked
(tradition said by the volleys at the Fight), and its
walls blackened by the smoke of generations. Yet
the transformation from smoke and old woodwork
to fresh paint and wall-paper delighted him. In
July, 1842, he married, and (almost, immediately
brought his bride to the Manse.
The seclusion which he valued at first sight, he
enjoyed through three years at the old house. Yet
it was a seclusion into which the modern may pry.
In the preface to the Mosses, and in the published
Hawthorne letters and journals, we get a closer
glimpse of his household than we can elsewhere get
of most others. The character of bothlthe house
and the occupants are revealed in this intimate
writing. The cold of the winters (when the steam
from the wash-tub froze on the servant's hair), the
beauty of the summers, the joy in nature, and the
more than joy in each other — these are shown in
diary and letter. Morbid, we may think, was
Hawthorne's shrinking from meeting with visitors.
But this seems almost an essential part of his nature.
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The Old Manse
Chiefly Literary
Hawthorne was his own workman, split the wood
and shoveled the snow, and even, in emergencies,
boiled the potatoes "with the air and port of a
monarch." Whatever he did, his wife admired
him for it, held him in reverence, would not tres-
pass on his time. She had a pretty sense of guilt
when the beauty of the sun after a shower made
her call him to the window. Idealist as she was
(indignant, for example, with the doctor for calling
her child "red-headed"), with her many minute
touches she draws a very fine picture of her manly
husband, not afraid of servile duties, struggling with
his art, waiting the slow payment for stories already
sold and printed, fretting at debt, and yet jesting,
as he watched her mending his old dressing-gown,
that he was the man with the largest rents in the
country.
But even though Hawthorne loved solitude, the
Manse was no hermitage. By persistent kindness
new neighbors of the occupants made themselves
welcome there. Emerson came often. So many
around him were mere echoes of himself, that it
refreshed and delighted him to find a man of such
individuality as Hawthorne. First of all he noted
Hawthorne's striking dignity : his aspect was regal,
even when he handed the bread at table. And then
[97]
Old Concord
his reticence charmed the philosopher, long ac-
customed to men of ready speech, so that we see
Emerson changed from his own oracular attitude.
"Mr. Emerson delights in him; he talks to him
all the time, and Mr. Hawthorne looks answers.
He seems to fascinate Mr. Emerson. Whenever he
comes to see him, he takes him away, so that no
one may interrupt him in his close and dead-set
attack upon his ear." So different were the natures
of the two men that neither truly appreciated the
achievements of the other; yet there was between
them from the first a strong bond of mutual interest
and respect.
"It was good," wrote Hawthorne, "to meet him
in the woodpaths, or sometimes in our avenue, with
that pure intellectual gleam diffused about his
presence like the garment of a shining one ; and
he so quiet, so simple, so without pretension, en-
countering each man alive as if he expected to re-
ceive more than he could impart." The picture is
unforgettable.
Another visitor to the Manse at this time was
Thoreau. Here were still stronger differences than
before, for the contemplativeness of Thoreau, as
real as that of either of his townsmen, was, as it
were, active, busy, and inquiring. His robustness
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kept him moving, and he came to the Manse not so
much to visit Hawthorne as to tempt him out upon
the river, where according to season they paddled
or skated, or rode the great ice-cakes in their slug-
gish way down-stream. Hawthorne found in him
an honest and agreeable ugliness of countenance,
and a wild, original nature. Mrs. Hawthorne pic-
tures the contrast between her husband and his
two friends when skating on the river below the
Manse, Emerson unskilled, Thoreau "figuring
dithyrambic dances and Bacchic leaps", and Haw-
thorne "like a self-impelled Greek statue, stately
and grave." The Hawthorne music-box lured
Thoreau ; he delighted in it. The romancer pur-
chased Thoreau's boat, and as if in mockery of the
stream by which (he says) he lived for weeks before
discovering which way it flowed, re-christened the
boat the Pond-Lily. And yet one cannot find that
the bond between the two men grew very close, in
spite of their journeyings. Thoreau was too strenu-
ous and abrupt for Hawthorne's more leisurely
nature.
It was with Ellery Channing, — poet and nature-
lover, more of a hermit than any of these friends,
because both less able and less willing to express him-
self, — it was with Channing that Hawthorne took his
[99]
Old Concord
greatest pleasure out of doors. And if Thoreau has
revealed to us the spirit of Walden, Hawthorne more
than any one else has written most intimately of the
river, in his account of these excursions with Channing.
"Strange and happy days were those when we
cast aside all irksome forms and straight-laced
habitudes, and delivered ourselves up to the free
air, to live like Indians or any less conventional
race during the bright semi-circle of the sun. Row-
ing our boat against the current, between wide
meadows, we turned aside into the Assabeth. A
more lovely stream than this, for a mile above its
junction with the Concord, has never flowed on
earth, — nowhere, indeed, except to lave the in-
terior of a poet's imagination. It is sheltered from
the breeze by woods and a hillside ; so that else-
where there might be a hurricane, and here scarcely
a ripple across the shaded water. The current
lingers along so gently that the mere force of the
boatman's will seems sufficient to propel his craft
against it. . . . At one point there is a lofty bank,
on the slope of which grow some hemlocks, declining
across the stream with arms outstretched, as if
resolute to take the plunge. In other places the
banks are almost level with the water; so that
the quiet congregation of trees set their feet in the
flood, and are fringed with foliage down to the
surface. . . .
"So amid sunshine and shadow, rustling leaves
and sighing waters, up gushed our talk like the
babble of a fountain. The evanescent spray was
Ellery's ; and his, too, the lumps of golden thought
[ ioo ]
Chiefly Literary
that lay glimmering in the fountain's bed. . . .
But the chief profit of those wild days to him and
me lay, not in any angular or rounded truth, which
we dug out of the shapeless mass of problematical
stuff, but in the freedom which we thereby won
from all custom and conventionalism and fettering
influences of man on man. We were so free to-day
that it was impossible to be slaves again to-morrow.
When we crossed the threshold of the house or trod
the thronged pavements of a city, still the leaves of
the trees that overhung the Assabeth were whisper-
ing to us, 'Be free! Be free!' Therefore along
that shady river bank there are spots, marked with
a heap of ashes and half consumed brands, only
less sacred in my memory than the hearth of a
household fire."
The hemlocks which Hawthorne here describes
are still a feature of the river. They lie on the
Assabet, only a little way above Egg Rock, the jut-
ting ledge which marks the meeting of this stream
with the Sudbury to make the Concord River.
Near here the ancient Indian encampment stood.
The waters of these rivers are now discolored by
the waste from mills nearer to their sources ; but
the banks are just as lovely, and it requires but
little imagination to picture the old "owners of
Musketaquid " lolling under the hoary hemlocks,
or fishing in their shade. Under their many bridges
the rivers glide as sleepily as when Hawthorne en-
[IOI]
Old Concord
joyed their peace; and the wide meadows give
vistas, the overhanging trees offer shady retreats,
which still tempt nature lovers out upon the
waters.
To Concord came occasionally Hawthorne's more
distant friends to search him out. Franklin Pierce,
Hawthorne's college classmate, was the most notable
of these.
Except for the editing of the naval journal of his
friend Bridge, Hawthorne's literary work while at
the Manse was comprised in the Mosses. For a
long time he must have been too happy to write :
his description of his domestic contentment shows
his marriage to have been ideal. But money mat-
ters began to press on him, he was much troubled
by the slightest burden of debt, and decided to
accept a position in the customs service. His
years at the Manse, as he glanced back at them,
seemed to him very brief. "In fairyland there is
no measurement of time ; and in a spot so sheltered
from the tumult of life's ocean, three years hastened
away with noiseless flight, as the breezy sunshine
chases the cloud shadows across the depths of a
still valley. . . . We gathered up our household
goods, drank a farewell cup of tea in our pleasant
little breakfast room, and passed forth between the
[ 102]
The Hemlocks
Chiefly Literary
tall stone gateposts as uncertain as the wandering
Arabs where our tent might next be pitched."
At the time when Hawthorne first came to Con-
cord, Emerson was already widely known. Nature,
written at the Manse, had been followed by the
Phi Beta Kappa oration and the divinity school
address, two public utterances which brought upon
him the clamor of shocked conservatives, but also
the eager and unquestioning applause of the seekers
after new light. These last soon began to flock
around him in his new home on Lexington Road.
This dwelling is on the corner of the Cambridge
Turnpike. The Emerson acres stretch for a little
distance along this road ; one field lies across the
brook. The house was built in the twenties by a
well-to-do Bostonian ; it long had the distinction
of having the only dry cellar in Concord. When
in 1835 Emerson married for the second time, he
purchased the vacant house ; and bringing his
bride to it immediately after his marriage, he lived
there until his death in 1882. The building has
the simplicity of the best New England architec-
ture, and its dignity also ; for the square white
house, lacking ornament, its Doric porch-columns
and its few moldings almost severe, stands without
concealment or pretence. A group of noble pines
[105]
Old Concord
and chestnuts, with a few younger evergreens,
shades it from the sun ; there is no other shelter.
If the retirement and mystery of the Manse echoes
the character of him who made it most famous, the
frankness of this other house, tempered always by
the restraint of a fine self-respect, equally personifies
its even greater occupant. Hawthorne seemed al-
ways to withdraw ; Emerson came forward with a
kindly welcome.
Of all who came to that door, none has left a more
vivid picture of the master than Howells, who as a
young man sought his acquaintance. He describes
the fine old man at his threshold, looking down at
his visitor with a vague serenity. Emerson was
then about sixty, yet scarcely showed his age in his
face of marble youthfulness, refined to delicacy by
his high and noble thinking. Howells felt the
charm of Emerson's eyes, shyer, sweeter, and less
sad than the similarly charming glance of Lincoln.
The smile was indeed incomparably sweet, with
a quaintness, gravity, and archness which Howells
was baffled to describe.
This inscrutableness of Emerson's was a quality
inseparable from his insight; but as Howells well
understood, it was inseparable also from his kindli-
ness. These qualities showed visibly in his gentle
[106]
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smile, which endeared him to the young people of
the village. Says Hawthorne's daughter, speaking of
her childhood :
"My earliest remembered glimpse of him was
when he appeared — tall, side-slanting, peering with
almost undue questioning into my face, but with a
smile so constant as to seem almost an added feature,
dressed in a solemn, slender, dark overcoat — upon
the Concord high-road. ... It then became one of
my happiest experiences to pass Emerson upon the
street. A distinct exaltation followed my glance
into his splendid face."
And Louisa Alcott has told of her enthusiasm for
Emerson, how she brought him offerings of flowers,
and sang to him ("a la Bettina", but modestly un-
heard) outside his window.
The interior of the house has often been described.
Its famous study, to the right of the front door, con-
tains neither desk nor desk chair; it has the ap-
pearance of an ordinary sitting-room, except that
one side is lined to the ceiling with books on simple
shelves. Yet it is here that Emerson wrote all the
books which he published after the year 1835.
Sitting in his simple rocker, his writing-pad on his
knee, he culled from his many journals, or from
his own retentive memory, the golden sentences
[ 107]
Old Concord
which go to make the treasury of his collected
essays. It must be remembered that Emerson was
in one sense never a student. Books were to him
but starting places or stimuli for his thought ; his
essays and lectures were slow accretions around an
original idea ; and the men and women about him,
life and nature as he read them, were more to him
than printed pages. So he had no need of the
paraphernalia of the student. He seldom quoted.
His books are full of native and homely illustrations
that serve to mark one difference between him, our
great thinker, and all the philosophers whom Europe
and Asia had produced.
The study is very simply decorated. In one
corner stands the bust of a dear friend. On the
walls are photographs and engravings, some of them
mementoes of European acquaintances. Over the
black marble fireplace hangs an oil copy of Michel-
angelo's "Fates", a symbolic picture which could
not be more appropriately hung. The furniture is
of a good New England period. The room is bright ;
it expresses, as does the house, the large simplicity
and unvarying cheerfulness of the man who for so
many years inhabited it.
In one other Concord house did Emerson do his
writing, the Antiquarian house, then a boarding-
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In Emerson's Study
Chiefly Literary
house to which he escaped when the press of wor-
shipping Transcendentalists broke in too much
upon his time.
Behind the Emerson house spread its gardens,
where in his earlier period Emerson used to work.
Then occurred that friendly rivalry between him-
self and his wife of which he so quaintly tells : did
he plant vegetables, flowers came up in their places.
Mrs. Emerson was a lover of gardens ; she brought
with her from Plymouth many of her favorite plants,
and year by year gave their descendants about in the
village, — a neighborly habit followed by her admi-
rable daughter, so that many Concord gardens have
come, in part, from this Emersonian enclosure.
But it was not Mrs. Emerson who drove her hus-
band from the work of gardening. He did not love
it. His little Waldo, anxiously watching his father
at work, cried, "Papa, I am afraid you'll dig your
leg !" The philosopher has given us his own ac-
count of the interminableness of the pursuit of
weeds. The labor fatigued him. And his con-
clusion is summed up in the pithy sentence : "The
writer shall not dig."
But if we cannot associate Emerson with his
garden, except in this negative fashion, we may
remember that Thoreau has been busy all about the
[in]
Old Concord
place. He lived at different periods in the Emer-
son family, where his aptness at work of all kinds
was constantly apparent, and where his host felt
great relief at this saving of his labor. Alcott came
with assistance of a thoroughly characteristic and
less practical kind. At the left of the barn, within
a circle of pines which still stands there, the con-
versationalist built what was intended for a rural
study for Emerson, constructed, as was Alcott's
way, out of crooked roots and boughs which it was
his delight to find in the woods. This material so
dominated the architecture that Thoreau, who as-
sisted as capable of driving nails to stay, com-
plained that he felt as if he were nowhere doing
nothing. As a study the draughty and mosquito-
haunted building was a failure ; even its undeniable
beauty did not last long, for in order to be pictu-
resque, its thatch curved upward at the eaves, and
the whole soon rotted away.
In contrast we may think of the simple gift of
Thoreau's elder brother. "John Thoreau, Jr., one
day put a blue-bird's box on my barn, — fifteen
years ago, it must be, — and there it still is, with
every summer a melodious family in it, adorning
the place and singing his praises. There's a gift
for you which cost the giver no money, but nothing
[H2]
Chiefly Literary
which he bought could have been so good." The
blue-bird box has lasted until destroyed by a spring
gale of the present year.
Emerson's townsmen appreciated him. " Sam "
Staples called him a "first rate neighbor and one
who always kept his fences up." The attempt to
blackmail him by moving an unsightly building
on to the lot before his house met with a prompt
response when the young men of the town came in
the night and pulled it down. One Concord
woman, when asked, "Do you understand Mr.
Emerson ?" to one of whose lectures she was going,
replied : "Not a word, but I like to go and see him
stand up there and look as if he thought every one
was as good as he was." But a neighboring farmer,
who said that he had heard all of Mr. Emerson's
Lyceum lectures, added: "and understood 'em,
too." And unforgettable is the picture of Concord
welcoming Emerson returning from Europe to the
house which his neighbors, after its fire, had helped
more distant friends to rebuild. They erected for
him a triumphal arch, cheered as he passed under
it, and accompanied him to his gate. No wonder
that his emotion choked him, nor that when he
could control his voice he spoke of their common
blood — "one family — in Concord."
[US]
Old Concord
When it came time for Emerson to die, his work
had been done, and well done. Over the whole of
the land his uplifting message had taken its full
effect. He was a great force during the Civil War.
He guided millions of young men and women on
their way. Those who had never heard his name
knew his message; and the present generation
is the wiser and happier for the spread of his
spoken and written word. In America, but not in
America alone, he stands unique in his influence.
When in the spring of 1882 he died, not his town
only, but the whole world, mourned.
The constancy of Emerson to his ancestral town
is in contrast to the goings and comings of Alcott,
at least for a number of years after he first fre-
quented Concord. The prospect of Emerson's
neighborhood brought him to the town, where
first, before his unfortunate "Fruitlands" venture,
he lived in the "Cottage", sometimes called the
Hosmer Cottage, on Main Street beyond the rail-
road bridge. The place, though small, was com-
plete with its numerous little rooms, its barn and
sheds. Except for the disappearance of the barn,
and the addition of a mansard roof, it looks the
same to-day, modestly brown, unobtrusive, and
comfortable. In this house were written many of
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The Alcott " Cottage " (1840-18 42) on Main Street
Chiefly Literary
the charming early letters of Alcott to his children,
which, some of them in facsimile to show his draw-
ings or his lettering, have lately been published in
such attractive form. And from this house Alcott
started on his journey to England, turning at the
door to say to his wife that he might have forgotten
to pay for his new suit of clothes, which, however,
she would attend to, of course.
And the patient woman was wondering how she
could feed her family until his return !
The result of his journey was the unlucky "Fruit-
lands" experiment, which sent the Alcotts back to
Concord at the very lowest point of their fortune.
The coming of a legacy, however, with some help
from Emerson, enabled them to buy the house
which Alcott named "Hillside", now known as
Hawthorne's "Wayside." A "mean-looking af-
fair" the house was when bought, but Alcott im-
mediately enlarged and improved it. He made
terraces on the slope behind the house, planting
with grapes and beautifying with summer-houses
built in his favorite style of rustic architecture.
And for three years this was the home of the
happiest part of Louisa Alcott's childhood.
She herself has given some pictures of its fun.
One day Emerson and Margaret Fuller came to
[ii7]
Old Concord
call. They discussed Alcott's advanced theories of
education, and Miss Fuller said :
'"Well, Mr. Alcott, you have been able to carry
out your methods in your own family, and I should
like to see your model children.'
"She did in a few moments, for as the guests
stood on the door steps a wild uproar approached,
and round the corner of the house came a wheel-
barrow holding baby May arrayed as a queen ; I
was the horse, bitted and bridled and driven by my
elder sister Anna, while Lizzie played dog and
barked as loud as her gentle voice permitted.
- "All were shouting and wild with fun which,
however, came to a sudden end as we espied the
stately group before us, for my foot tripped, and
down we all went in a laughing heap, while my
mother put a climax to the joke by saying with a
dramatic wave of the hand :
"'Here are the model children, Miss Fuller.'"
These were the famous days of the Alcott dramat-
ics. Their means were of the simplest ; costumes and
stage fittings were home-made; even the dramas
themselves were often written by the girls. Mrs.
Alcott actively assisted, the philosopher placidly
approved, and the wholesome circle of girls and boys
which the four Alcott children speedily drew round
themselves eagerly helped in anything that was
undertaken. No reader of Little Women needs any
further description of this feature of life at Hillside.
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No one ever left in Concord pleasanter memories
than the four Alcott sisters. In character they
varied widely. Anna, the oldest, was domestic
and thoughtful, a good home-maker ; yet she had
a share of Louisa's ability with her pen, wrote
quite as many of the home-made dramas, has left
fine letters, and it was she (not Louisa) who pinned
inside a journal the manuscript of a story of her
own, which she read aloud to the family, receiving
their hearty approval. Louisa was the tomboy,
ready for any prank; she was also ambitious and
a hard worker, with a special bent for writing which
for many years went unrewarded. Elizabeth was
gentle and sweet, of a constitution not weak, but
later broken by a severe attack of scarlet fever
brought by the mother's devotion to her work
among the poor. May, the youngest daughter,
had some of Louisa's adventurousness ; she rode
recklessly when at rare intervals she could secure
a mount. Her talent was artistic, and was de-
votedly improved ; she is famous for her copies of
Turner. She possessed a large share of the Alcott
quality of generosity, and gave practical help to
struggling beginners. Together, these four made a
household that naturally attracted the young folk
of their town.
[119]
Old Concord
But no one in the Alcott household could fail of ac-
quaintance with the serious side of life. It may have
seemed romantic to shelter fugitive slaves. "My
first pupil," wrote Miss Alcott, "was a very black
George Washington whom I taught to write on the
hearth with charcoal, his big fingers finding pen and
pencil unmanageable." Yet the same qualities which
led Alcott to take this noble risk, brought him also,
and frequently, to the edge of pennilessness. The fam-
ily shared its dinner with all who came to ask. They
took in some sickly wayfarers with the result that the
whole family caught small-pox. True, once at least
the family generosity was almost immediately justified.
"One snowy Saturday night," writes Miss Alcott,
"when our wood was very low, a poor child came to
beg a little, as the baby was sick and the father on
a spree with all his wages. My mother hesitated
at first, as we had also a baby. Very cold weather
was upon us, and a Sunday to be got through before
more wood could be had. My father said, 'Give
half our stock, and trust in Providence ; the weather
will moderate, or wood will come.' Mother laughed,
and answered in her cheery way, 'Well, their need is
greater than ours, and if our half gives out, we can
go to bed and tell stories.' So a generous half went
to the poor neighbor, and a little later in the eve,
when the storm still raged and we were about to
cover our fire to keep it, a knock came, and a farmer
who usually supplied us appeared, saying anxiously,
[ 120]
Chiefly Literary
' I started for Boston with a load of wood, but it
drifts so I want to go home. Wouldn't you like to
have me drop the wood here ; it would accommodate
me, and you needn't hurry about paying for it.'
' Yes,' said father ; and as the man went off he
turned to mother with a look that much impressed
us children with his gifts as a seer, ' Didn't I tell you
wood would come if the weather did not moderate ? '
Mother's motto was, 'Hope, and keep busy,' and
one of her sayings, ' Cast your bread upon the waters,
and after many days it will come back buttered.' "
With such a husband, lovable but unworldly,
Mrs. Alcott needed these mottoes. Though Emerson
often acted as a Providence, the family was fre-
quently on short commons. But nothing could
shake their belief in its head, nor, for that matter,
did Emerson waver in his admiration of his friend.
He wrote, "Once more for Alcott it may be said that
he is sincerely and necessarily engaged to his task,
and not wilfully or ostentatiously or pecuniarily."
And Staples, the jailer, gave a similar tribute
when he said after he had arrested Alcott for re-
fusal to pay his poll-tax as a protest against the
laws : " I vum, I believe it was nothin' but principle,
for I never heard a man talk honester."
It was inevitable, however, that the family should
get deeper and deeper into difficulties. "The trials
of life began about this time," wrote Miss Alcott,
[121]
Old Concord
"and my happy childhood ended." The house
which saw so much merriment saw also the two older
sisters learning to appreciate the burden which lay
upon their mother, the duties which they them-
selves could not escape. Mrs. Alcott's anxieties
so preyed upon her that a Boston friend, coming
to call, found her unable to conceal the traces of
recent tears. " Abby Alcott," demanded the visitor,
"what does this mean ?" The story being told, she
offered Mrs. Alcott employment in Boston.
As was usual, the proposal was taken to the fam-
ily council. In Boston the father could find more
chance to make money; the two older girls were
able to teach. "It was an anxious council," wrote
Miss Alcott many years after, "and always pre-
ferring action to discussion, I took a brisk run over
the hill and then settled down for 'a good think' in
my favorite retreat. It was an old cart-wheel,
half hidden in grass under the locusts where I used
to sit to wrestle with my sums. ... I think I
began to shoulder my burden then and there."
That burden she took to Boston, and nine years
later she brought it back again. Let any one who
supposes Miss Alcott's life was happy, read care-
fully her letters and journals of those years. There
was drudgery at the housekeeping, uncongenial
[ 122]
Chiefly Literary
teaching, humiliation from unkind employers, and
always the disappointment of continual failure in
the work for which she felt herself best fitted.
Gradually she came to know that if prosperity was
to be won for the family, it must be by her alone.
By his famous, but not profitable, "conversations"
her father could never hope to keep the family even
in bread and butter. With this knowledge, then,
in 1857 she came back to Concord, weighed down
also by anxiety for the life of her sister.
In Concord, Elizabeth Alcott died, and in Sleepy
Hollow cemetery she lies buried. Louisa, who had
interrupted her work to nurse her dying sister, now
took it up again. Her sister Anna's engagement
seemed at first only another bereavement: "I
moaned in private," says her journal, "over my
great loss." But fifteen years afterward she wrote,
"Now that John is dead, I can truly say we all
had cause to bless the day he came into the family ;
for we gained a son and brother, and Anna the
best husband ever known." Her writing of imagina-
tive and even lurid tales prospered somewhat; but
she was writing for a market that seldom pays well.
She wrote a short play, which was produced without
either success or failure ; she taught again ; she tried
again the pleasures of dramatics in Concord. The
[ 123 ]
Old Concord
approach of the country toward its years of trial
found her intensely interested ; and when at last
the war broke out, she was anxious to serve as a
nurse.
The family was now living in the "Orchard
House." "Hillside" had been sold to Mr. Haw-
thorne. The old house on the new land had been
considered useless ; but Mr. Alcott proved its
timbers to be still sound, and repaired it according
to his fancy. The few odd external ornaments and
the many individual conveniences inside are of his
invention. His daughters did the painting and
papering, and May devised and executed the charm-
ing decorations which still are there. As to the
furnishings, it is pleasant to know that their sim-
plicity, so little in agreement with the fussy taste
of the day, but quite in accord with modern ideas,
arose as much from Alcott good sense as from
Alcott poverty. The great elms in front were the
chief beauty of the place ; the orchard, in which
the whole family took great pleasure, has since
disappeared. It is natural that, with the wide
changes in their older home, all the early Alcott
traditions should cluster around this place. Its
simple aspect and comfortable proportions speak of
home and hospitality.
[ 124]
:i»«T — ....
Orchard House, Home of the Alcotls
Chiefly Literary
From this house Miss Alcott departed when she
received her call to go to the front. "We had all,"
she says, "been full of courage till the last moment
came ; then we all broke down. I realized that I
had taken my life in my hand, and might never see
them all again. I said, 'Shall I stay, Mother ?' as
I hugged her close. 'No, go ! and the Lord be with
you!' answered the Spartan woman; and till I
turned the corner she bravely smiled and waved
her wet handkerchief on the doorstep." It proved
that Miss Alcott had indeed taken her life in her
hand. A period of arduous nursing resulted in an
attack of typhoid pneumonia, which forever took
away her elasticity. From that period the physical
joy of life departed.
And yet the Alcott success, so long worked for,
was now at hand. Her father had already received
the approval of his town, by being appointed super-
intendent of the public schools. His daughter now
wrote her Hospital Sketches, which were well re-
ceived by the public. She felt that at last she had
found her vein and could be sure of herself. Her
powers and her reputation slowly grew, until at
last she wrote in her diary :
"September, 1867. — Niles, partner of Roberts,
asked me to write a girls' book. Said I'd try."
[127]
Old Concord
She tried. The result was Little Women.
What would appear to be the first half of the
book was written at the Orchard House in the spring
and early summer of 1868. "I plod away," she
wrote, "though I don't like this sort of thing. Never
liked girls or knew many, except my sisters ; but our
queer plays and experiences may prove interesting,
though I doubt it."
No wonder that, years afterward, she wrote
against this entry in her journal, "Good joke."
The publisher's test of the book was made by giv-
ing the manuscript into the hands of a girl whose
absorbed interest, whose laughter and tears, were
sufficient proof of its quality. The second part of the
book was begun in November. "Girls write to ask
who the little women marry, as if that was the
only end and aim of a woman's life. I won't marry
Jo to Laurie to please any one."
And so at last the "pathetic family," as she
called it, came into its own. She might, in a letter
home, crow about "the Alcotts, who can't make
money." Her "rumpled soul" was soothed by the
thought (and in it we can see the extent of her
absorption in her family) that "we made our own
money ourselves."
But the cost was very great. The drain of over-
[128]
Chiefly Literary
work and the habit of industry often made mere
existence a burden. Though from this time her
books for young people were the delight of the
nation, she wrote with continual weariness. 1 Yet
no hint of this feeling crept into her pages, or dulled
the vivacity of her tales. The habit of daily heroism
prevented.
Through childhood, Miss Alcott had longed for a
room of her own. She had received it at "Hill-
side." Her father, all through his life till now, had
wished to found a School of Philosophy, and now
at last it was made possible. At one side of the
Alcott place, well to the left of Orchard House as
one views it from the road, was built the simple
but not unpicturesque building which in the sum-
mer of 1880 delighted Alcott's heart with its school
of thirty pupils and its many more visitors. There
was much lecturing ; the town and the country were
amused ; and Miss Alcott, not for the first time, in
the midst of the extra work which he threw upon
her, derived innocent entertainment from her guile-
less father. The school existed for only a few
years. The building has been removed, and its
influence has departed; but it was for more than
twenty years one of the Concord sights.
Louisa Alcott's burdens began to grow too great
[ 129]
Old Concord
for her. Her mother had died ; her sister May,
after the short term of her European marriage,
died also, and sent to Concord the baby daughter
to be her aunt's solace and care. The little family
moved to the Thoreau house on Main Street, where
they lived with the widowed sister. Here, or in
Boston where she also used to stay, with difficulty
Miss Alcott finished her remaining stories. Many
claims on her sympathy and purse came to her,
often from perfect strangers, and in her nervous
state these kept her at work. But her father was
placid to the end. The big study which was built
for him still contains his books and his many jour-
nals ; the pictures and furnishings of the house still
speak the Alcott taste; and the simplicity of the
building reminds of the plain virtues of a family
at which we can only wonder. They passed away.
Alcott died in Boston on March 4, 1888. On the
morning of his funeral his famous daughter, then
living at her physician's in Roxbury, followed him
to rest.
Of the Alcott family, the world remembers two
for their achievements. Their town remembers
more. For patience and hard work in difficulties,
for unwavering purpose in developing their talents,
for strong family feeling, a brave front to the world,
[ 130]
Chiefly Literary
neighborliness, and ungrudging generosity, in Con-
cord the Alcotts will never be forgotten.
We have seen that Alcott's "Hillside" became the
property of Hawthorne, who changed its name to
"Wayside." After seven years spent away from
Concord, chiefly in Salem, Lenox, and West Newton,
Hawthorne returned, in 1852, and occupied the
house, unchanged in form from Alcott's day. A
letter of his wife describes her arrival in advance of
his, the drying of mattresses wet while moving,
the nailing down of the carpet lining, and the "ad-
mirable effect" of the woodwork, "painted in oak."
He enjoyed the place, cut his beanpoles in the
woods, sold his hay, was rather unappreciative of
his farming land across the road, and rightly antici-
pated that his waste land on the hilltop behind
would yield him the true interest on his investment.
Alcott's terraces he let grow up with trees. And
perhaps remembering his own vision, as expressed
in one of his prefaces, expecting here to see it ful-
filled, he named the place "Wayside." He had
written : " I sat down by the wayside of life, like a
man under enchantment, and a shrubbery sprang
up around me, and the bushes grew to be saplings,
and the saplings became trees, until no exit ap-
peared possible, through the entangling depths of
[I3i]
Old Concord
my obscurity." And truly the vision pictures his
mental life at this place.
Hawthorne's great books were not written in Con-
cord. All he accomplished in his first tenancy of the
new house was Tanglewood Tales, and a campaign
biography of his friend Pierce. We know that at this
time his health was good, that he picnicked in the
woods with his family, and saw his neighbors as little
as he could. He had no plans for going away ; but
Pierce's election to the Presidency led to the offer of
the consulate at Liverpool, and Hawthorne accepted
it. He left in 1853, not to return until the sum-
mer of i860. He brought for his final sojourn a wide
acquaintance with people, which at last made him
accustomed to meet strangers. His new book, the
Marble Faun, had placed him at the summit of his
fame. But his physical health had broken.
Coming with many literary plans, he wished to
secure himself a quiet study. So besides other
alterations he built the "tower" which is the strik-
ing feature of "Wayside." Different as the house
is from the Manse in its lack of seclusion, the tower
nevertheless gives a certain suggestion of inaccessi-
bility. Besides, the mysterious woods creep close.
Even here there is that romantic aloofness which
Hawthorne's nature always created.
[ 132]
Hawthorne's " Wayside
Chiefly Literary
In the house, the tower-study is the strongest
reminder of him. "A staircase, narrow and steep,"
wrote his son, "ascends through the floor, the open-
ing being covered by a sort of gabled structure, to
one end of which a standing desk was affixed ; a
desk table was placed against the side. The room
was about twenty feet square, with four gables,
and the ceiling, instead of being flat, was a four-
sided vault, following the conformation of the roof.
There were five windows, the southern and eastern
ones' opening upon a flat tin roof, upon which one
might walk or sit in suitable weather. The walls
were papered with paper of a light golden hue,
without figures. There was a closet for books on
each side of the northern window, which looked
out upon the hill. A small fireplace, to which a
stove was attached, was placed between the two
southern windows. The room was pleasant in
autumn and spring; but in winter the stove ren-
dered the air stifling, and in summer the heat of
the sun was scarcely endurable. Hawthorne, how-
ever, spent several hours a day in his study, and
it was there that the Old Home was written, and
Septimius Felton, and Dr. Grimshawe, and the
Dolliver fragment."
Howells, coming on the same visit on which he
[135]
Old Concord
saw Emerson, called also upon Hawthorne at "Way-
side," and has given a pleasant picture of the great
romancer. But Alcott, living next door, has his
own word to say of his neighbor's shyness and de-
sire to avoid notice. The truth was that though
his consular experiences had fitted Hawthorne to
meet people when necessary, the natural gloom of
his nature was pressing on him now, accentuated
by both his own declining health and the great
crisis through which the nation was passing. Pierce,
to whose administration was laid the blame of the
coming of the Civil War, was very unpopular ; and
as Pierce's friend, Hawthorne felt the situation
keenly. Brooding, he found himself unfit for work.
He retired often to his hilltop toward the close of
the day; and pacing up and down along the crest,
he wore the path of which the traces still exist.
His daughter wrote: "We could catch sight of him
going back and forth up there, with now and then
a pale blue gleam of sky among the trees, against
which his figure passed clear. . . . Along this
path in spring huddled pale blue violets, of a blue
that held sunlight, pure as his own eyes. . . . My
father's violets were the wonder of the year for us."
His literary motives in these last years were in
part connected with his house. Thoreau had told
[136]
Chiefly Literary
him that it had once been inhabited by a man who
believed he should never die. The idea took hold
of Hawthorne, and he seemed unable to escape from
it. From England he had brought the motive of a
bloody footstep. Both of these he wrought into
Septimius Felton, the scene of which was laid in the
house and (as we have seen) on the hilltop behind.
Earthly immortality was to have taken a large part
in the Dolliver Romance, which he began, and the
first part of which he published, but which was never
finished. For Hawthorne's own death was drawing
near.
His decline came visibly. His once black hair
began to turn white. He was thinner, paler, stooped
a little, and his vigorous step became slow. A trip
toward the south bringing him only the shock of the
sudden death of his companion, he started with
Pierce to the White Mountains. And it is ap-
propriate that of him, who dwelt so persistently
upon the idea of death, we should have two clear
pictures of his children's farewells.
"A few days before he and Pierce set forth," wrote
his son, " I came up to Concord from Cambridge to
make some requests of him. I remained only an
hour, having to take the afternoon train back to
college. He was sitting in the bedroom upstairs ; my
mother and my two sisters were there also. It was
[ 137]
Old Concord
a pleasant morning in early May. I made my
request (whatever it was) and, after listening to the
ins and outs of the whole matter, he acceded to it.
I had half anticipated refusal, and was the more
gratified. I said good-by, and went to the door,
where I stood a moment looking back into the room.
He was standing at the foot of the bed, leaning
against it, and looking at me with a smile. He had
on his old dark coat ; his hair was almost wholly
white, and he was very pale. But the expression of
his face was one of beautiful kindness, — the gladness
of having done me a pleasure, and perhaps something
more, that I did not then know of."
His daughter described him as he left for his
journey. "Like a snow image of an unbending
but an old, old man, he stood for a moment gazing
at me. My mother sobbed, as she walked be-
side him to the carriage. We have missed him in
the sunlight, in the storm, in the twilight, ever
since."
Hawthorne never returned from his journey. He
died at Plymouth, New Hampshire, in the night of
May 18-19, 1864, peacefully in his sleep. His
body lies buried in Sleepy Hollow cemetery. Among
his trees near "Wayside" a simple memorial was
erected to him on the centenary of his birth.
Beyond "Wayside", and close at hand, stands
the little cottage of Ephraim Wales Bull, the orig-
[138]
Chiefly Literary
inator of the Concord grape. He came to Con-
cord to carry on his trade of a gold-beater ; he had
a little workshop and kept several workmen. But
as time went on, his taste for horticulture caused
him to interrupt the more lucrative business for
the pursuit of a favorite desire, the breeding of a
grape which should be earlier and hardier than
any then in cultivation, since the grapes of his
day, chief among them the Catawba and Isabella,
gave very poor results in New England. He had
the patience and skill of the true originator. Find-
ing in his grounds a wild grape of somewhat superior
flavor, he crossed it with the Isabella, and saved
the fruit. "I put these grapes," he said, "whole,
into the ground, skin and all, at a depth of two
inches, about the first of October, after they had
thoroughly ripened, and covered the row with
boards. I nursed these seedlings for six years, and
of the large number only one proved worth the
saving. On the ioth of September, 1849, I was
enabled to pick a bunch of grapes, and when I
showed them to a neighbor, who tasted them, he
at once exclaimed, 'Why, this is better than the
Isabella!'"
From this grape, which he named the Concord,
Bull gained fame, and but very little money. He
[ 139]
Old Concord
had not the business knowledge of the nurserymen,
into whose pockets passed most of the profits from
this and other grapes which the horticulturist bred.
The result was that he died in poverty, though
never neglected. He held as a result of his reputa-
tion several elective or appointive offices, and was
always much respected. Personally he was a man
of oddities. He had a formidable temper; oc-
casionally at the Hawthornes' could be heard the
distant sound of his tremendous wrath. When in
public life, he wore a silk hat, shaved carefully, and
wore a wig of glossy yellow-brown hair. But when
he retired, "a transformation occurred almost as
startling as those in a theatre, and he appeared as
an aged man with snow white beard, nearly bald,
oftenest seen in a dressing gown and little black
silk cap, tending his plants lovingly." He died in
1895 and is buried near his famous neighbor. The
best memorial of him is the ancient original grape-
vine, still to be seen by its trellis, near the little
Grapevine Cottage.
Lexington Road leads on to Meriam's Corner,
where the tablet in the wall marks the beginning
of the running fight with the British. From this
place one can almost see, up the old road to Bed-
ford and beyond the Meriam homestead, the site
[ 140]
Academy Lane
Chiefly Literary
of Thoreau's birthplace. But the house has been
moved away, and indeed it would be difficult to
limit one's memories of Thoreau's early years to
the confines of a house. His strong taste for an
outdoor life possessed him through his youth, and
steadily growing stronger after his college days,
at last made it impossible for him to live the
conventional life. He did indeed make the first
venture common to the young college graduate —
school-teaching. In the old schoolhouse on the
Square he tried this profession, though on the new
principle of avoiding corporal punishment. But
for those days this was too ideal. The school com-
mittee complained. Thoreau tried their method by
whipping a half dozen scholars on the same day,
and that night sent in his resignation because his
arrangements had been interfered with. He then
taught with his brother John in the new Concord
Academy, the site of which is recalled by the name
of the street on which it stood, Academy Lane.
Here, though he was happier, he was not free, and
so turned away from the work.
His life at the Emerson house allowed him the
desultory employment which he preferred, giving
him time to himself. But as more and more he
desired complete independence, so he experimented
[ 143 ]
Old Concord
toward the means for it. He found that by a few
weeks' labor in the year (oftenest at surveying) he
could satisfy his simple needs : plain food, service-
able clothes, a book or two, and nothing more. It
must not be supposed that he ever desired to eman-
cipate himself from human society; he enjoyed it
too much, and never made a move toward avoiding
his friends. Indeed, in spite of his strong taste for
solitude, he had an equally strong affection for his
family and his town. Concord was enough for him
to judge the world by. When once, while he was
still a boy, his mother suggested that some day he
would buckle on his knapsack and roam abroad,
his eyes filled with tears, and he was comforted only
by his sister's saying : "No, Henry, you shall not go ;
you shall stay at home and live with us." Stay at
home in one sense he did not, yet in another sense he
did. He was never long happy away from Concord.
So when in 1845 he made his famous experiment
at Walden, he did not mean entirely to escape from
society. He knew very well the shortest route
home, and often took it. "I went to the woods," he
wrote, "because I wished to live deliberately, to
front only the essential facts of life, and see if I
could learn what it had to teach, and not, when I
came to die, discover that I had not lived."
[ 144]
Chiefly Literary
Walden, which lies by road less than two miles
from Concord village, is an irregular pond of some
sixty-four acres, now, as then, completely sur-
rounded by woods. Campers and the railroad
have brought fires to the woodland, and the gipsy
moth has necessitated much cutting; therefore the
pond is not so beautiful as in Thoreau's day. But
the dominating bluffs are the same, and the place
seems still remote. Here on Emerson's land, above
a placid cove, Thoreau built the hut whose site is
marked by the cairn of stones ; the boards he bought
from an Irishman's shanty; Alcott, Hawthorne,
Curtis, and others helped him to erect the frame;
the furnishings he largely made himself, and he
settled there before summer. His steadiest em-
ployment was on the beanfield which he planted
near the road ; his real pursuit was in observing the
life of the fields and woods.
"Snakes," said Emerson, "coiled round his leg,
the fishes swam into his hand, and he took them
out of the water; he pulled the woodchuck out of
his hole by the tail, and took the foxes under his
protection from the hunters." Once, when a spar-
row alighted on his shoulder, he felt it "a greater
honor than any epaulet he could have worn." He
studied the fish, the loons on the lake, the ants in
[145]
Old Concord
his woodpile. In the pages of his Walden, and in
his later essays, these things are charmingly re-
flected.
Friends came to see him at his hut. He speaks
oftenest of Channing and Alcott, but others came
as well, not always to his satisfaction. To such as
did not know when their visit had ended, he gave a
broad hint by leaving them, answering them "from
greater and greater remoteness."
It is fairly certain that the hut at Walden was a
station for the underground railway. "It offers
advantages," he wrote, "which it may not be good
policy to divulge." But whether or not Thoreau
harbored slaves here, we have a picture of him in
this employment at a later period. "I sat and
watched the singular and tender devotion of the
scholar to the slave. He must be fed, his swollen
feet bathed, and he must think of nothing but rest.
Again and again this coolest and calmest of men
drew near to the trembling negro, and bade him feel
at home, and have no fear that any power should
again wrong him. He could not walk this day,
but must mount guard over the fugitive."
During his Walden period, Thoreau had his brief
experience with the law. Like Alcott at an earlier
day, he had refused to pay his poll-tax, in protest
[146]
Thoreau's Cairn at Walden
Chiefly Literary
against the Mexican War. Going to the village to
have a shoe mended, he was arrested and put in
jail, where Emerson hastened to him.
"Henry, why are you here ?"
"Why are you not here ?" was Thoreau's re-
joinder. He took his imprisonment calmly, was
interested in the new experience, placidly accepted
his release on the morrow because some one had paid
his fine, and presently was leading a huckleberry
party to a hilltop from which "the State was no-
where to be seen."
Thoreau left Walden at the end of two years, and
lived at the Emerson house for nearly two years
more, during part of which the philosopher was in
Europe. Then for the rest of his life, Thoreau lived
in the house which his father, with his aid, rebuilt
on the main street. Literary success came to him;
he was widely known, and had new congenial ac-
quaintances. But he still lived an individual life.
He tramped the fields as he had always done, fre-
quented farmhouses in his study of human nature,
led the children to the woods, or, in the village
street, made them hear the vireo's song which till
then they had not noticed. He interested himself,
but only spasmodically, in his father's pencil-mak-
ing, which was done in the ell of the house. Hav-
[ H9]
Old Concord
ing improved the machine for grinding the lead, and
after learning to make a perfect pencil, he gave up
the work, — it could teach him nothing more. In
the attic of the house he kept his collections of eggs,
flowers, and Indian relics, and here he did his writ-
ing. The house was smaller then, for Alcott had
not added his study ; the interior has since been
much changed. But in this house Thoreau felt the
strong culminating passion of his life.
\. As the slavery question pressed more and more
upon the country, Thoreau felt it as deeply affect-
ing him. John Brown came to Concord, and the
naturalist was impassioned for his cause. The two
had a long talk together, in the Main Street house.
Brown's attempt at Harper's Ferry and his imprison-
ment drew from Thoreau the strong "Plea for Cap-
tain John Brown" which he repeated at many
places. Never did Thoreau come more out of him-
self than at this time. His critics had reproached
him with coldness and aloofness, but now he showed
himself entirely human.
It was the last great chapter of the experience with
life which he had so ardently desired. Exposure in
the woods brought on a serious illness, from which
even his vigorous frame never recovered. Con-
sumption slowly wasted him away. His dying was
[ISO]
Chiefly Literary
like some of the heroic endurances of his outdoor
life, and he studied it in the same way. He was
cheerful, he bore sleeplessness well, and he vividly
described the dreams that came in his fitful repose.
When he could no longer climb the stairs, he had his
bed brought down to the parlor that looked upon
the street, in order to see the passers-by. His
famous friends came to see him ; and when in their
awe of the sick man the children did not come, he
asked for them. "I love them as if they were my
own." So they, as well as his older friends, made
his sick bed pleasant. In his last letter he wrote,
"I am enjoying existence as much as ever, and re-
gret nothing." In May, 1862, very peacefully he
died.
Beyond this Main Street house (where cling those
sadder memories of Thoreau which can be associated
with his indoor life) on Elm Street, and bordering the
river, stands the picturesque residence of Frank
B. Sanborn, a younger contemporary of Concord's
great men. Coming to Concord in 1855, at the re-
quest of Emerson and several other citizens who
desired a superior school for their children, he
taught here for eight years, and has resided here for
most of the remaining time. He was a leader in the
joyous dramatics in which the Alcott sisters and his
[ 151 ]
Old Concord
own scholars took such happy part. He was well
acquainted with the notable men, accounts of whom
he has passed on to us. In the days when to be an
abolitionist had its dangers, Mr. Sanborn became
prominent as the friend of John Brown. Brown
twice visited him in Concord, once in a house owned
by Channing, then standing opposite Thoreau's, and
once in the house directly behind the Thoreau house,
which during recent years has been occupied as a
girls' school. Mr. Sanborn was one of those north-
ern men who were aware that Brown was preparing
some movement for the freeing of the slaves, and
who were providing him with money.
As a consequence, after the Harper's Ferry raid
occurred that incident in Concord of which the
newspapers of the day were very full, — Mr. San-
born's attempted abduction. Officers sent by the
Sergeant-at-arms of the United States Senate sur-
prised him in his house at night, showed a war-
rant, and tried to force him into a carriage. Though
handcuffed, he resisted stoutly, and his sister's calls
brought help. The neighbors prevented the success
of the attempt ; and Judge Hoar, hearing the noise
and guessing its cause, had already started to fill
out a writ of habeas corpus before a summons came
for him to do so. The sheriff presented the writ to
[152]
The Sanborn House from the River
Chiefly Literary
the officers, who, after the rough handling they had
had, were glad to give up their prisoner. Legal
means prevented the repetition of the event.
Mr. Sanborn was for years in the employ of the
State of Massachusetts ; he has long been associated
with the Springfield Republican as editor and cor-
respondent ; he has edited the works of others, and
has published his own poems and writings. During
the life of the School of Philosophy, he was its secre-
tary, and was also a lecturer in it. That shy genius,
Ellery Channing, spent the last years of his life in
Mr. Sanborn's home. The building Mr. Sanborn
erected for himself ; with its dark front and tangled
shrubbery it seems as withdrawn as Hawthorne's
own. From the "three-arched stone bridge" that
stands close by, the stepped brick end of the tall
house seems to stand somberly above the quiet
river. "The last of the Concord School," as Mr.
Sanborn is often called, is easily recognized in Con-
cord streets by his tall, stooping figure, his white
locks, and his rapid stride.
The limits of this survey of Concord allow no room
for other houses, whether of local or more general
interest. Neither is it here possible to do much
more than to indicate the charm of the old streets.
Concord was not planned : it grew, and its roads
[155]
Old Concord
seldom run straight for more than a little distance.
The half-mile of Main Street beginning at the
Library gives almost the longest vista uninterrupted
by rise or turn ; under its arching trees the wide
road is, winter or summer, very beautiful. Else-
where the roads meander gently, following the
slight contours of the ground ; they are generously
broad, comfortably shaded. In spite of the fact
that Concord's site was chosen because of its
meadows, it is only in the center of the town that
there is any uniformity of level. The undulations
of the roads, therefore, add another charm. Be-
sides the elms that line them, the streets are edged
by the shrubberies and hedges of residences that
show the simple variations of colonial architecture.
Outside the town the meadows, cultivated fields,
and woods, always with glimpses of gently rising
hills, give varied views. If in America there is
anything that speaks simply and feelingly of the
older times, it is a New England town. Concord,
— dignified, picturesque, homelike, and still vital,
— is notable among its kind.
[156]
The Burying Grounds
?&&$
IV
IN any town as old as Concord, the graves natu-
rally attract attention, from the interest either
in stones recording famous names, or in the me-
morials of forgotten dead whose epitaphs are odd
or quaint. Concord's two older cemeteries, on
Main Street and on the hill, have abundant interest
of the latter kind.
These two enclosures traditionally contend for
priority ; but since the earlier graves for many
years had no stones at all, this matter cannot be
settled except by the conjecture that the earlier
burials took place upon the hill, near the original
church. Both of these cemeteries contain stones
of the seventeenth century, bearing the names of
old Concord families.
In those early days, and for a long time afterward,
people were more given to epitaphs than we are now.
[159]
Old Concord
The virtues of the departed were impressed upon the
reader, sometimes with an incongruity that provokes
a smile. Mr. Job Brooks, who died at ninety-one,
was cautiously "considered by survivors as having
come to the grave in a full age." His wife "lived
with her said husband upward of sixty-five years,
and died in the hope of a resurrection to a better
life." Tilly Merrick "had an excellent art in family
government." The pompous epitaph is excellently
displayed on the tombstone of James Minot, "Esq.
A. M.," for here it is stated that he was "An excell-
ing grammarian ; enriched with the gift of prayer
and preaching; a commanding officer; a physician
of great value ; a great lover of peace as well as of
justice ; and which was his greatest glory, a gent'n
of distinguished virtue and goodness, happy in a
virtuous posterity; and, living religiously, died
comfortably, September 20, 1735, aged 83."
Yet on the other hand there are here inscriptions
which by their simple recital of manly traits bear
conviction with them. Such is the case with the
epitaph of the son of the foregoing, Timothy Minot,
schoolmaster and licensed preacher. "He was a
preacher of the gospel whose praise was in all the
churches : a school-master in Concord for many
years : his actions were governed by the dictates of
[160]
The Burying Grounds
his conscience; he was a lover of peace; given to
hospitality ; a lover of good men ; sober, just, tem-
perate ; a faithful friend, a good neighbour, an ex-
cellent husband, a tender, affectionate parent, and a
good master."
Besides these claims to virtue, the old stones
frequently bear moral sentiments or serious reflec-
tions, always best in the form of quotations from
the Bible. But our ancestors felt also the attrac-
tiveness of poetry, and in Concord cemeteries we
have many examples of the species of sacred dog-
gerel which was almost stereotyped for generations,
but of which there are amusing variations. Thus
little Charlotty Ball says :
"My dady and my mamy dears, dry up your tears,
Here I must lie till Christ appears."
and Archibald Smith, a Baptist, takes occasion to
suggest his "persuasion" in the verse :
"The just shall, from their mouldering dust,
Ascend the mansions of the blest,
Where Paul and Silas and John the Baptist
And all the saints forever rest."
In interest the Hill Burying-ground surpasses the
cemetery on Main Street. It has first the advan-
tage that here are buried men of more importance
in the town. Here lie those early pastors of Con-
[161]
Old Concord
cord, Daniel Bliss, William Emerson, and Ezra
Ripley; here are the graves of some of the town's
benefactors, John Beaton, Doctor Cuming, and
Hugh Cargill ; and here also are buried those two
heroes of the Fight, Barrett who gave the order to
attack the British, and Buttrick who executed it.
But apart from this, the little cemetery has the
advantage of picturesqueness. As one climbs to the
summit of the ridge, the stony path, the tall slender
trees, the ordered stones, all pointing upward, make
a symbolic composition not readily forgotten. Or
from the top, looking downward, one sees first the
quaint table-tombs of the old worthies, the rows of
graves, and then through the trees, — best shown
when these are leafless, — reminders of the living
world : the Square and Milldam with their groups
of people, the First Parish Meeting-house, and St.
Bernard's Church. Thus very near to life, yet
with the peace of the other world, the old cemetery
lures with its contrasts.
But one stone, humbly set apart, brings more
visitors to this spot than do its other interests or
beauties. It marks the grave of a man insignificant
in his life, and remembered only for an epitaph
which has been more widely quoted and translated
than has any other of Concord's literary works
[ 162 ]
The Burying Grounds
except the writings of Emerson. It was penned by
Emerson's great-uncle, Daniel Bliss the Tory.
In the days when the struggle of the Revolution
was drawing near, and when Bliss saw his hopes of
his future vanishing away in the new doctrines of
liberty, there died in Concord a negro who had but
recently been a slave. With a cynicism showing no
tenderness for the man, Bliss made him immortal
by an epitaph. It contained a satire on the times,
on freedom, on human nature itself. People study
it to-day for its clear antithesis and cutting phrases ;
but we may remember too that it throws a light
upon one feature of our country's history, also that
it reflects the bitter feeling of a disappointed man.
God wills us free, man wills us slaves.
I will as God wills, God's will be done.
Here lies the body of
John Jack
A native of Africa who died
March 1773, aged about sixty years.
Tho' born in a land of slavery
He was born free.
Tho' he lived in a land of liberty
He lived a slave.
Till by his honest, tho' stolen labors,
He acquired the source of slavery,
Which gave him his freedom,
Tho' not long before
Death the grand tyrant,
[163]
Old Concord
Gave him his final emancipation,
And set him on a footing with kings.
Tho' a slave to vice
He practised those virtues
Without which kings are but slaves.
The grave of John Jack lies over the top of the
lower part of the ridge, and can be found by follow-
ing the worn track which branches where the main
path turns to climb to the summit. It has always
been an object of interest ; the early weather-worn
stone was replaced ; and in antislavery days the
grave was tended, as if it were a symbol of the for-
tunes of the down-trodden race, by Miss Mary
Rice, whose house stands not far from the rear of
the cemetery. It was this spinster who planted
the lilies which yearly, by their blossoms, recall not
only the slave, but also the devoted lady and the
cause for which she worked.
Concord's most famous cemetery is Sleepy Hol-
low. From the Square it is reached by Bedford
Street, going past, or through, an older burying-
ground. Beyond this for many years the hollow
lay in natural beauty, its amphitheater a farmer's
field, its steep surrounding ridges wooded. The
name of Sleepy Hollow was early given it ; nature-
lovers took pleasure in it, and it was a favorite re-
[164]
The Burying Grounds
sort of Concord writers. In especial, Hawthorne
was fond of it. "I sat down to-day," he wrote
during his stay at the Manse, "... in Sleepy
Hollow. . . . The present season, a thriving field
of Indian corn, now in its most perfect growth, and
tasseled out, occupies nearly half the hollow ; and
it is like the lap of bounteous nature, filled with
breadstuff." He writes elsewhere of meeting there
Margaret Fuller and Emerson. And he and his
wife looked forward fondly to a time when they
might build themselves a "castle" on the steepest
ridge. He lies there buried now, on the very spot.
In 1855 the Hollow and adjoining land were taken
for a cemetery. Wisely, the laying out was very
simple. At the formal dedication, Emerson made
an address, Channing read a dedicatory poem, and
an ode by Frank B. Sanborn was sung — truly
prophetic in its lines :
"These waving woods, these valleys low,
Between these tufted knolls,
Year after year shall dearer grow,
To many loving souls."
Its half century of age and clustering associations
have made Sleepy Hollow celebrated throughout
America.
Whether one approaches through the older ceme-
[165]
Old Concord
tery or direct from Bedford Street, the entrance to
the Hollow is peculiarly pleasing. Two ridges face
each other like a gateway, guarding a little rise of
the road ; from a little distance one notices between
them a line of treetops ; then almost abruptly the
Hollow opens to the view, — right, left, and beneath.
The steep nearer bank at first conceals the level of
the amphitheater, which lies in a long, irregular oval,
in full sun. Peaceful it is as when, many years ago,
the name was given it ; the curving lines of graves
do but mark its quietude as permanent, and em-
phasize the appropriateness of its name. The two
protecting ridges sweep around it from both sides ;
their tall trees enhance the seclusion. Their lines
lead the wandering eye finally to a closer attention of
what at first sight the visitor considers merely as the
attractive completion of the enclosing hills, — the op-
posite ridge, which rises finely from its screen of hem-
locks at the bottom to the tops of its crowning pines.
But then one sees that the ridge is thickly marked
with graves. The broken hemlock cover reveals
their stones ; they show above it through the boles
of the taller trees. An indented line of stones
stands along the crest of the hill, marking that
Ridge Path to which, after his first long study is
satisfied, the visitor turns his steps.
[166]
^%;'v#
Hawthorne's Grave in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery
The Burying Grounds
The road to the left is Hawthorne's cart-track.
From it one looks along the solemn Hollow, or back
at the dark tomb in the entrance ridge. It was by
this road that Hawthorne sat, to listen to the birds
in the trees above, or in imagination to build his
castle on the hill that steeply rose in front.
As one climbs the path from the Hollow, Haw-
thorne's grave is the first to be seen at the crest. It
lies in a retirement like his own through life, within
a cedar hedge. Below, through the trees, the Hol-
low shows distant and withdrawn : it was thus in
life that he viewed the world, and thus his spirit
could view it still. Across the path are to be seen,
on the very edge of the descent, the several graves
of the Thoreau family, their names and dates of
birth and death upon one common stone, with small
headstones to mark the resting-places of Henry and
his less famous relatives. Near by are the stones
of the Alcotts, those of the parents and three younger
daughters side by side, and of the elder sister and her
husband, John Pratt, in an adjoining lot. Here,
then, in a space of but a few square rods, lie at rest
these three families of friends and neighbors, as-
sociated in death as in life.
Further along Ridge Path is the grave of Emerson.
Under tall pines it is marked by a great fragment of
[169 J
Old Concord
rose quartz, on whose face is a modest bronze tablet
with his own couplet,
"The passive master lent his hand
To the vast Soul which o'er him planned."
Within the plot where the body of the master lies
are grouped the gravestones of his family : his
mother and his famous aunt, his "hyacinthine boy"
who died in childhood, and the daughter who tended
his old age. And studying these, one sees here re-
vived the ancient custom of inscribing epitaphs.
Their stately phrases establish the worth of lives of
simple dignity and usefulness ; one cannot but pon-
der on them.
Read some of these striking words. Of Emerson's
mother: "Her grand-children who learned their
letters at her knee remember her as a serene and
serious presence, her sons regarded her with entire
love and reverence, and in the generation to which
she belonged it was said of her that she resembled
a vessel laid up unto the Lord, of polished gold
without and full of heavenly manna within." Of
his aunt: "She gave high counsels — it was the
privilege of certain boys to have this immeasurably
high standard indicated to their childhood, a bless-
ing which nothing else in education could supply."
[ 170]
The Burying Grounds
Of his wife: "The love and care for her husband
and children was her first earthly interest, but with
overflowing compassion her heart went out to the
slave, the sick, and the dumb creation. She re-
membered them that were in bonds as bound with
them." And of the daughter still so affectionately-
remembered in Concord : " She loved her Town.
She lived the simple and hardy life of old New
England, but exercised a wide and joyful hospitality,
and she eagerly helped others. Of a fine mind, she
cared more for persons than books, and her faith
drew out the best in those around her."
This striking group of memorial stones, of him
who needs no epitaph and of those whose lives were
worthy of such praise, is scarcely to be equaled any-
where in America. It makes evident what is often
forgotten, — the human relationships of the great
philosopher. And this noble family becomes a lofty
type of what is best in our American homes of
simple tastes, quiet lives, and high ideals.
Another Concord family, the Hoars, buried close
by at the foot of the ridge, is remarkable for its
record of public service. Their graves lie clustered
about the massive monument of Samuel Hoar, who
during his early life was the acknowledged leader of
the Middlesex Bar. In his later years, after serving
[I7i]
Old Concord
a term in Congress, he gave himself up to political
and philanthropic services. His best remembered
act was his journey to Charleston, South Carolina,
in 1844, to protest in the name of Massachusetts
against regulations affecting free colored seamen.
In the public excitement thus occasioned, his life
was in danger, but he bore himself with calm cour-
age and wise judgment. Around him lie buried his
daughter Elizabeth, the friend of Emerson and
many notable people, a woman whose intellect and
character were perhaps as fine as any that Concord
has produced ; his son George Frisbie, for many
years United States Senator from Massachusetts ;
and also his son Ebenezer Rockwood, best known as
Judge Hoar, a member of Grant's cabinet, and
famous for his public spirit, legal wisdom, and
flashing wit. And here once more are modern
epitaphs worth study. Other members of this
family, who continued its record of ability and
public service, lie buried elsewhere in the cemetery.
Concord remembers that these men, besides being
of national importance, were devoted to its local
needs. It is families such as these that have made
our American institutions what they are, and have
maintained the highest ideals of public service.
The gravestone of Ephraim Wales Bull, the orig-
[ 172]
The Ridge in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery
The Burying Grounds
inator of the Concord grape, is not far from this
enclosure of the Hoars.
Apart from the interest in Sleepy Hollow which
arises from its famous graves, there is another, its
beauty. Its natural advantages have been made
the most of in its roads and paths ; they have even
been gradually improved. There are handsome
monuments in the cemetery. Unquestionably the
finest is the Melvin memorial, sculptured by Daniel
C. French, erected to commemorate four Concord
brothers, all soldiers in the Civil War.
To see Sleepy Hollow most intimately one should
go when it is undisturbed by human voice. When
the early sun casts long shadows, when the dusk is
stealing on, when the unbroken expanse of snow
lies level above the graves — these are the times when
the silence of the place is vocal to the thoughtful ear.
Yet if one would see the cemetery at its most
impressive, let him go on Decoration Day, when
the place is thronged, when the cannon boom their
minute guns, and when the veterans of two wars,
with flags and melancholy bugles, come with wreaths
of flowers to pay tribute to the comrades that have
gone before.
[175]
Envoi
r. i!
ENVOI
IT may sometimes seem, to those inclined to
criticize, that Concord has been unduly favored,
or that being so, it has plumed itself too greatly
on advantages that now are past. It is of course
unique to have so many memorials in one small
area. The battle-field, the houses of literary in-
terest, Walden with its unusual story, and the
famous graves, — it would be indeed remarkable
if any town should not boast itself of these. But
Concord is not living on its past ; it has its present
interests, and is attending to them. The tide of
tourists little disturbs the business of its streets.
And Concord feels as others do who look back to
achievements separated from the present by such
wide intervals. They are no longer local. Time
has made them common property.
One studying the earlier generations finds good
[179]
Old Concord
material in Concord, that is all. The hardships and
the courage of the founders have left here pathetic
and inspiring reminders. The deeds of our ances-
tors who freed us have their memorial here. Here
too those great in thought and literary art have
carved their message deep. And there is more.
The voiceless generations have left their footprints
in this place, so that from the earliest times till now
the student can trace their progress in all ways that
affect human comfort and happiness. Here we
have, then, compressed, condensed, those typical
events which make the life of that essential factor
in the progress of the New World, an American
town.
The present is (and speaking generally the pres-
ent always will be) crowded with critical problems
pressing to be solved. We never shall find safer
guidance for their solution than in a study of the
past. In Concord, among so many noble memo-
ries, earnest lovers of America will find inspiration
for the duties and decisions of to-day.
[180]
Index
INDEX
Academy, 143.
Academy Lane, 141, 143.
Acton, 32.
Adams, Samuel, 44, 61.
"Alarm company ", The, 45, 46.
Alcott, Abba May (Mrs. Alcott),
117, 118, 121, 122.
Amos Bronson, 4, 11, 112,
114, us, H7> "8, 127,
130, 136, 145, 146.
Anna, 119.
Elizabeth, 80, 119, 123.
Louisa May, 107, 117, 119,
120, 121, 122, 123, 127, 128,
129, 130.
May, 119.
The Alcott Family, 1 12-13 1.
Alcott Houses : "Cottage", 86,
89, 114, 115, "7>
"Orchard House", 83, 84,
123, 124.
"Thoreau- Alcott", 86, 87.
Antiquarian Society, I, 108, 109.
Assabet River, 101, 102.
Bank Robbery, 15.
Barrett, Amos, 49, 63, 68.
James, Colonel, 54, 55, 60, 162.
Mrs. James, 55, 56.
Bartlett, Doctor, 14.
Bedford Street, 4, 16, 80.
Bigelow, Edwin, 12.
Bigelow's Tavern, 9, 51.
Black Horse Church, 40.
Bliss, Daniel, the minister, 38, 162.
Daniel, the Tory, 38, 39, 40, 43,
44, 54, 60, 73, 163.
Phebe, 38.
Block House, 86.
Brister's Hill, 84, 85.
British soldiers, Grave of, 74, 75.
British spies, 43, 54.
Brown, John, 13, 150, 152.
Bulkeley, Rev. Peter, 29, 30, 31,
32> 33-
Bull, Ephraim W., 138-140, 172-
.173-
Buttrick, David, 13, 14.
Humphrey, 13.
John, Major, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64,
164.
Catholic Church, 4, 6, 80, 162.
Channing, William Ellery, the
poet, 11, 99, 100, 101, 146,
. . l6 s- .
Christian Science Church, 4, 6.
Colonial Inn, 1, 23.
Concord, before the settlement,
25, 26.
description of, 37-38, 79-89,
155-156.
To-day, 179, 180.
Fight, see Chapter 2.
Why at Concord, 42-43 ;
Revere's warning, 44; the
muster, 46 ; coming of the
British, 49; their slight
success, 50-52 ; Pitcairn
and his boast, 53-54; the
Bridge, 55; the American
advance, 61-62; the skir-
mish, 62-63 ! the British
retreat, 64-65, 68.
Grape, 84, 139-140, 175.
River, 100, 101.
settlement of, 26-3 1 .
"Constitution", frigate, 19.
[183]
Index
"County House", 4, 6.
Court House, 4, 9, 45, 79; in
1800, 15; in 1700, 25.
Curtis, George William, 145.
D. A. R. Chapter House, 81, 83.
Davis, Isaac, of Acton, 61, 62, 63.
Deerfield, 25.
Egg Rock, ioi.
Eliot, John, 32.
Emerson, Mary Moody, 59, 170.
Ralph Waldo, 9, 10, 12, 91, 93,
97, 98, 105-114, 117, 145,
165, 169, 170, 171.
Hill Burying-ground, 4, 157, 159,
161-164.
"Hillside", ^"Wayside."
Hoar, John, 49.
E. R. (Judge Hoar), 142.
George F. (Senator Hoar),
172.
Samuel, 22, 171, 172.
Family houses, 86.
graves, 171-172.
Hosmer, Joseph, 39, 40, 60, 61, 72.
Howells, Wm. D., 106, 136.
Indians in Concord, 26-28, 31,
32, 101, 102.
William, 9, 10, 46, 49, SO, 59. J ACK; j OHN , GRAVE OF , 163-164.
63, 72, 89, 162
Waldo, ill, 170.
Epitaphs, 170-171.
House, 9, 77, 83, 105, 106, 143.
The study, 107, 108, 109.
Epitaphs, 160, 161, 163, 170, 171,
172.
"Fairyland", 85.
Felton, Septimius, 49, 65, 66, 67,
135-
Fire engine, in 1800, 16.
French, Daniel Chester, 74, 175.
Fruitlands, 117.
Fuller, Margaret, 117, 118, 165.
Gage, Gen. Thomas, 41.
Grapevine Cottage, 84, 138, 140.
Great Meadows, 26, 49, 84.
Green store, 6.
Hancock, John, 44.
Harvard College in Concord, 72. Main Street Burying-ground, 51,
Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 10, 49, 65, 86, 159.
84, 92, 93-105, 131-138, Manse, The Old, 11, 50, 59, 63,
145, 165, 167, 169. 80, 89-105.
Hemlocks, The, 101, 103. Masonic Lodge (old school house),
Hey wood house, 83. 4, 6, 143.
[184]
Jail, 6, 16.
Jail Tavern, 16.
Jarvis, Dr., 5.
Jones, Elisha, 59, 63, 64.
house, the, 57, 59, 63, 70.
John, 29.
Laurie, Captain, 56, 57, 60, 62.
Lee, Joseph, the Tory, 19, 40, 41,
73-
Lee's Hill, 19.
Lexington Road, 4, 9, 11, 37, 44,
49, 65, 80, 83, 105, 140.
Library, in 1800, 19.
Life in Concord in 1850, 12-15.
in 1800, 18-22.
in 1750, 22-24.
in 1700, 25.
Lowell, J. R., 74.
Lowell Road, 79.
Main Street, ii, 37, 86, 87, 156.
Indt
ex
Meeting House, First Parish, see
Unitarian Church.
Meriam's Corner, 49, 68, 84, 140,
frontispiece.
Middlesex Grounds, 4, 5, 16.
Hotel, 5, 16.
Mill, 16, 51.
Milldam, The, 4, 16, 31, 37, 43,
84, 162.
Mill pond, 16, 38, 50.
Minuteman Statue, 59, 69, 71, 74.
Minutemen, 43, 46, 49, 72.
Monument of 1836, 69, 73, 91.
Monument Street, 37, 79, 80.
Moore house, 83.
"Mosses from an Old Manse,"
102.
Moulton, Martha, 52.
Nashawtuc Hill, 40.
Nashoba, 32.
North Bridge, 37, 50, 53, 54, 56,
62, 63, 72, 73, 74, 90, 175.
Old Elm on the Square, 16, 17.
Parsons, Captain, 55, 56, 64.
Percy, Lord, 71.
Pierce, Franklin, 102, 132, 136,
137-
Pitcairn, Major, 4, 52, 53, 54, 68.
Philip's War, 25.
Powder Alarm, 41.
Preparedness for war, 71, 72.
Provincial Congress, 42.
Public Library, 86, 156.
Punkatasset Hill, 50, 59.
Railway in Concord, 5.
Revere, Paul, 44, 45.
Rice, Mary, 12, 164.
Ridge Path, 166, 169, 173.
Ripley, Rev. Ezra, 10, 89-93, l & 2 -
Roads, 15, 155, 156.
Robinson, Lt. Col., of Westford
62.
Samplers, 21.
Sanborn, Frank B., 13, 86, 151,
152, 153, 155, 165.
School of Philosophy, 129, 155.
Shadrach, 12.
Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, 80, 138,
164-175.
Smith, Lt. Col., 50, S3, 54. 64, 65,
68.
Social Circle Memoirs, 14.
Soldiers' Monument, 3, 6.
South Bridge, 37, 64, 86.
Square, The, at present, 3-4; in
1850, 5-9; in 1800, 15-16;
— 32, 37, 46, 50, 51, 52,
54. 79. 143. 162.
Stage-coaches, 5.
Staples, "Sam", 113, 121.
Sudbury River, 101.
Sudbury Road, 86.
Sunday traveling, 21.
Tahattawan, 26.
Temperance movement, 14, 15.
Thoreau, The Thoreau aunts, 5.
Henry David, 6, 10, 11, 12,
85. 98» 99. m> "2. 136,
142-151; at Walden, 144-
149; in jail, 148-149; in-
terest in slavery, 150, 151 ;
169.
John, 10.
John, Jr., 112, 143.
Cabin, 85, 145-146.
Cairn, 85.
Cove, 85.
House, on Square, 6.
on Main St., 86, 87, 149, 150,
151.
Three-arch stone bridge, 155.
Transcendentalists, 12, 109.
[185]
Index
Town Hall, 4, 9, 16, 25, 37, 51,
52, 80.
Town Pump, 16.
Two Brothers' Rock, 32.
Underground Railway in Con-
cord, 12, 13, 146.
Unitarian Church, 4, 7, 9, 16, 19,
25> 39» 42. 80, 162.
Walden Pond, 10, 12, 144, 145-
149, 175.
"Walden Pond Association ", 85.
Walden Street, 38, 84.
Warming pan, 21.
Warren, Joseph, 44.
"Wayside", 84, 117, 124, 13 1,
132. 133, i35> 138-
Willard, Simon, 27, 33, 40.
White, Deacon, 21, 22, 23.
Wood, Ephraim, 41, 72.
Wright, Amos, 52, 53.
Wright Tavern, 4, 5-6, 16, 37,
38, 46, 47, 80.
[186]
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